What I've Learned Heston Blumenthal

Designing my coat of arms took about seven years. They ask you for your motto—you can choose it in English or Latin—and mine is: “Question everything.” Because the opposite of questioning everything is question nothing.

Eating is a multisensory experience. When I started as a chef, I had a memory of a restaurant, L’Oustau de Baumanière in France, that I went to as a teenager. We were sitting outside; there’s a big rock that’s lit up at night,  the smell of lavender, the crunch of gravel, the noise of crickets… I fell down this rabbit hole into a  multisensory wonderland. When I started cooking, I realised I  was chasing the feeling I had as a teenager.

I have a sweaty head. I can tell the temperature of a room by what my head does. This is really sad, but I’ve spent a lot of time in Australia, so I know the temperatures of the airlines that fly to Australia. BA is, I think, 21°c. Emirates is higher… It’s even worse when I hear it coming out of my mouth.

I’ve got attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, I found out recently. It was a multiple-choice test and if you scored more than 20 you were ADHD. I was 60-something. I  saw a friend afterwards and he said: “Ahh, I’m really sorry about that, it’s OK.” And I replied: “What do you mean it’s OK? I love it. I’ve just been given an explanation.”

I’ve been lucky—or unlucky— enough to eat some very weird foods. Whether it was leeches cooked in goose blood or fermented shark— which made me think I was having an anaphylactic shock.