Heston Blumenthal is jetting his Michelin-starred restaurant The Fat Duck all the way to Australia.
The three Michelin-starred restaurant in Bray, Berkshire will be relocated to a hotel in Melbourne for six months from February 2015.
The highly unusual move will also see the flagship restaurant's staff flown 10,000 miles to Australia, along with some of its trademark fixtures and fittings, leaving the 17th century building which is home to The Fat Duck free for renovations.
"This is not a pop-up restaurant," the famous chef told reporters in Melbourne, saying that it would be "the furthest migration of a duck of any kind".
"This is not a guest chef coming over and doing a few weeks in somebody else's restaurant," he said. "We're going to pick up the Fat Duck – the whole team – and fly them over here.
"The restaurant, which will have the same name as the original without the Michelin stars, will be based in the five-star Crown Towers hotel in the bustling Australian city.
After its six-month residency, the same venue will be used for Dinner, the London version of which has two Michelin stars and was last year voted the world's seventh-best restaurant.
Dinner will then run under the supervision of its current head chef, Ashley Palmer-Watts. Heston has had this project in the making since his first visit Down Under in 2003. He said: "I fell in love with the country immediately. From that very first moment, the idea took root – someday I wanted to have a restaurant there.
He added: "The restaurant scene is fantastic, the diversity exciting, and the produce incredible, but better than all of that, the people are just great fun."
