Doggy Bag: Act Now and Get a Set of Steak Knives!

This is just sad: Heston Blumenthal is one of the greatest chefs of his generation. His restaurant, The Fat Duck in Berkshire in England, has the stature of the French Laundry. In 2007 and 2009, the Good Food Guide named it the best restaurant in the U.K., and its owner has engineered weird-science dishes that've become the signature expressions of the age, like egg and bacon ice cream and ultra-low heat cooking.

All the sadder that Blumenthal should've spent an interview with 7x7's Sara Deseran shamelessly hyping a kitchen gadget, the $399 SousVide Supreme. The chef was in town Tuesday to do a Billy Mays at CCA, and, well, he just couldn't stop pitching -- even when Deseran asked him about Chang-gate.

[Deseran:] So homecooks now have a counter filled with a toaster, an espresso maker and a sous vide machine. What's next?
[Blumenthal:] There is nothing. Life after sous vide doesn't exist. [laughs] But I think the sous vide machine has been the most important development in the professional kitchen in decades. The control that the water bath gives you means we can explore the nuances of food that we'd never been able to do before. It's as useful for the timid domestic chef as it is for a professional chef.