THE Fat Duck restaurant, operated by Heston Blumenthal, which has won every possible accolade, including three Michelin stars and the title of ‘The World’s Best Restaurant’, is making plans to include Manx queen scallops on its menu.

Representatives of the restaurant have already made enquiries about sourcing queenies from the Isle of Man and are due to visit the Island shortly to carry out further research into the Manx queenie industry with a view to adding a new dish onto the Fat Duck’s multi award-winning menu.

The news was revealed by the DEFA director of fisheries Andy Read to a gathering of Manx fishermen who were celebrating the news that queenies have recently been handed the top award at the 2011 Sustainable Seafood Awards, beating five other finalists at Billingsgate Seafood School in London. 

A number of luxury, high class British restaurants have recently started using Manx queenies on their expensive menus, elevating the formerly humble shellfish to delicacy levels, with very positive reviews from food writers.

After years of promoting queenies at exhibitions like the Good Food Show and with celebrity backing from the likes of Kevin Woodford, the Hairy Bikers, Gino D’Acampo, Steve Coogan and Rob Bryden, suddenly Manx queenies are gaining a celebrity status of their own.

And now the restaurant voted the best in the world in 2005 is adding to the reputation of the Isle of Man’s queenies. The Fat Duck has received worldwide acclaim for its revolutionary cooking in Bray, not far from Windsor and Maidenhead.

Heston Blumenthal has pioneered new methods of cooking and getting the best possible flavour experiences from even the most humble of ingredients, leading to dishes with the most amazing descriptions and tastes, such as snail porridge, nitro poached aperitifs, salmon poached in liquorice gel, oak moss, Pommery grain mustard ice cream, and truffle toast.

The Fat Duck’s famous tasting menu currently also has a dish called “The BFG”, described flamboyantly as "Kirsch Ice Cream and the smell of the Black Forest". What on earth is "the smell of the Black Forest"? Who knows - but it sounds fascinatlngly fantastic! The menu comes in at a hefty £160 a head but there is a never-ending queue of diners wanting to sample the restaurant’s unique 4-hour experience and a huge waiting list.

The cheapest bottle of wine is around £30, but you can push the boat out big style if you like - such as £6,900 for a 1989 Petrus.

Wealthy Manx residents are frequent visitors to the self-taught Blumenthal’s restaurant but for humble journalists and photographers it’s a dream too far, achievable only if Mr Lotto comes up trumps one weekend! 

The Fat Duck’s website also reflects the constant search for innovation and Heston Blumenthal’s team of researchers use all sorts of devices, such as an exploding oven, liquid nitrogen, dehydration and any number of chemistry experiments to extract the best possible tastes from ingredients.

As evidenced by his series of off-the-wall ‘Fantastical Feasts’ TV programmes, there’s a massive respect paid to the ingredients and he’s prepared to try anything . . . absolutely anything. The programme where he spent days on end in the lab trying to get some taste out of garden slugs was a classic. It was a forlorn attempt and no doubt he’s tried many an experiment on all sorts of oddball ingredients over the years and succeeded where others fear to tread - the sea cucumber is a classic example.

But Heston Blumenthal is not a man to rest on his laurels. He is constantly trying to find new flavours and taste experiences and if The Fat Duck eventually includes Manx queenies on its menu then it will be intriguing to see how - and  if - he deconstructs our beautiful shellfish and turns it into something amazing.

In the Isle of Man we have all known for decades that Manx queenies have a fantastic flavour with a unique and superb taste. It will be fascinating to see what Heston Blumenthal can do with them using his appreciation of the history of food, flavour, textures, smells but - above all - a sense of fun and enjoyment, so missing in most restaurants these days.

We will carry an update on the progress of whether Manx queenies will find their way onto the Fat Duck’s menu. Watch this space . . .