Heston Blumenthal Crashes Pop-Up Restaurant, The Chubby Pigeon

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You know you’ve stumbled across content gold when you mock-up a restaurant for a jovial jab at the newest and best restaurant in Australia and its proprietor, celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal, doesn’t even care. In fact, Blumenthal decided to check out his competition.

Blumenthal’s Michelin 3-star restaurant, The Fat Duck, opened this week and breakfast duo, Nova 100’s Tommy and Meshel decided to make a monkey of its launch and its pricey degustation menu by opening a pop-up version called The Chubby Pigeon.

The Chubby Pigeon, a dining experience which doubled as an outside broadcast held at host, Tommy Little’s Melbourne home this morning, served meals exclusively from Blumenthal’s Coles Range of gourmet foods.

Image source: www.foodmag.com.au

“The Fat Duck has been in all the papers and news all week and we just thought, it’s kind of funny his stuff is served at Coles,” said Nova 100’s Tommy Little. “You can eat his food and it doesn’t have to cost you 500 bucks,” he added.

All week, Tommy and Meshel have been promoting The Chubby Pigeon, encouraging listeners to enter the ballot for a chance to win a table at the pop-up restaurant.

To Tommy and Meshel’s surprise, Blumenthal actually attended the opening of The Chubby Pigeon.

“He came along and had a laugh, he spoke to all the guests that were there and he even did the dishes,” said Little.

Nova 100’s program director, Rohan Brown explained the greatest content is often born from the tiniest idea. He said: “Being radio, the audio needs to paint the pictures. But [The Chubby Pigeon] idea came about last December when someone pointed out how expensive The Fat Duck was going to be and how funny it is that you can buy Heston’s food at Coles for 10 bucks.”

“Humour is really important in painting a picture [for radio]. The team thought it would be funny to host a fine dining experience in Tommy’s crappy little courtyard… From there momentum took over and we ended up with Heston finding out about it and wanting to come along,” Brown added.

“Radio isn’t purely audio anymore,” explained Little. “We now have video content and social media, we tweeted all morning. The only down side is I now have to wear a full face of make up to work,” he mused.

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