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Heston’s Feasts is a television cookery programme starring chef Heston Blumenthal and produced by Optomen for Channel 4. The programme follows Blumenthal as he conceptualizes and prepares unique feasts for the entertainment of celebrity guests. In each episode, Heston Blumenthal invites six celebrity guests to a four-course feast in which the dining room, food, and presentation are themed around a period of history. Blumenthal begins by researching the history, science and myth surrounding dishes of the past.
He often experiments with exotic ingredients or tests unusual cooking techniques to remake historical dishes in his own style. In 2010, Heston’s Feasts won the Royal Television Society Award for best features and lifestyle series. Writing for The Guardian, TV critic Sam Wollaston praised the episode “Heston’s Chocolate Factory Feast” as “an extraordinary cornucopia of joy and wizardry and humour. The basis for this episode was the Victorian era and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Blumenthal serves a feast themed around the Middle Ages, when chefs used gastronomic trickery to entertain the royal court. For his Tudor period feast, Blumenthal draws inspiration from the extravagant royal banquets of Henry VIII. Blumenthal creates a feast inspired by the gluttonous meals of the ancient Roman Empire. Blumenthal serves his guests a Christmas-themed banquet. Blumenthal draws inspiration from the psychedelic 1960s and emulates his fictional hero, Willy Wonka of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The basis for this episode was children’s fairytales, and also the extravagance and gluttony surrounding the Regency Era. The inspiration for this episode are horror novels from the 19th century, particularly Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Dracula and Frankenstein.