Heston Blumenthal Is Moving The Fat Duck From The UK To Melbourne

Here's an interesting experiment: take one of London's best known restaurants and move it, including its entire staff, to Melbourne, Australia for six months. Sounds crazy, but that's exactly what visionary chef and restaurateur Heston Blumenthal is doing this December.

The just-announced move means that The Fat Duck will be closed at its original location in Bray, England, while a new iteration of the iconic restaurant will open at Crowne Melbourne Resort in February 2015. After six months, and a massive renovation, The Fat Duck will re-open in England just in time for its 20th anniversary, leaving behind a new location of Dinner By Heston Blumenthal in Australia.

We've been among the more vocal proponents of Melbourne's burgeoning dining scene (See also: The 9 Best Things I Ate In Melbourne), and now one of the world's best chefs is committing to this city as well.

"The restaurant scene is fantastic," Blumenthal says of Melbourne in a press release, "the diversity exciting, and the produce incredible, but better than all of that, the people are just great fun."