The Perfectionists' Café, Heathrow Airport: Restaurant review

Is an airport departures lounge really the place a perfectionist would choose to eat?

It takes a confident chef to open a restaurant in an airport. And it takes a very confident chef to call it The Perfectionists' Café. Note the final placing of that apostrophe. With it, Heston Blumenthal announces his latest diffusion line, in Heathrow's gleaming new Terminal 2, as a café for all perfectionists, rather than the brainchild of one – the perpetually curious chap we know the Mekon of Molecular Gastronomy to be.

Whether an airport departures lounge is really the place a perfectionist would choose to eat is debatable. The pernickety frequent flyers are all safely tucked away in their executive club lounges. The rest of us schlubs just want a comfy seat, a good cup of coffee and something vaguely edible to settle our pre-flight nerves.

But clever old Heston has thought this through. He has set out to create something we didn't know we needed; a really good, standard-defining café/brasserie, offering perfect versions of casual classics. His Perfectionists' Café opened in June, after a long and secretive development process.

Building on Heston's early TV series, In Search of Perfection, which went back to first principles to create ideal versions of Britain's most popular dishes, The Café offers a menu of everyday staples – fish and chips, roast chicken, pizza, steaks, the inevitable burger – all of them painstakingly researched and reconstructed to be as near as possible perfect.

The 'Extraordinary Fish and Chips', for example, is made with fish from Cornish day boats, fried in beer batter extruded from a syphon for maximum crunch and served with a phial of pickled onion vinegar to spray around, creating a misty flashback to an old-fashioned chippy. And that's not the only touch of synaesthetic Heston magic. Clouds of mandarin-scented dry ice pour from cocktails. kirsch is spritzed from an atomiser to intensify a Black Forest Gâteau-inspired sundae. Normally in airports, it's just the duty-free perfume ladies who come at you with atomisers. Here, you're sprayed with your own lunch.

Perched over the terminal with a bird's-eye view of the runway, the Café is low-slung and inviting, with a touch of BOAC glamour. One wall bears a devotional frieze – Heston ascendant, surrounded by ingredients – and at the entrance, vapour clouds billow from the nitro ice-cream parlour. There's casual seating for lone travellers at the front, around an open kitchen dominated by a wood-burning pizza oven, capable of cooking a pizza in 60 seconds, Naples-style.

So, does it produce the perfect pizza? Thin and crisp, with an authentically sloppy base, the one we try is clearly a cut above, with its molten pools of fior di latte mozzarella and translucently fine salami. Maybe not quite perfect; too heavy on the truffle oil for that. But oh my, the chilli oil that comes with it – fruity and expansively hot – now that is full-on addictive.

Next, the burger, about which the menu – chatty as a smoothie carton – goes into some detail: the three cuts of dry-aged British beef specially minced to align the grain, etc. Again, it's very good, rather than great, the patty deeply charred under its tower of fixings and camera-ready toasted brioche.

Now we come to the perfect thing. The fish and chips. They are miraculous – the best I've ever tasted. That aerated beer batter delivers an amazing taro-like crunch, and stays crisp to the last bite, giving an almost steamed quality to haddock so fresh and lightly cooked it falls into pillowy hunks. Chunky, old-school fries also keep their crispness, even after a spritzing from that 'chip-shop smell' atomiser. The extras – minted mushy peas, tartare sauce – are fine enough; they're just not needed.

Our waitress is nonplussed when I ask whether the chips are triple-cooked (quite rightly) and the staff struggle a bit with their scripts. But they rise gamely to the challenge of conveying the fun and theatre. Desserts are served with a flourish – and in the case of that Black Forest Gâteau-inspired sundae, a skoosh of kirsch. There's less wow factor with the ice-cream, though it looks pretty, in its edible wafer boat and scattering of rose chips and popping candy. But what's the point of churning ice-cream with nitrogen if they don't try and blow a little smoke up your glace?

The short wine list offers every wine by the glass, carafe or bottle – one user-friendly touch among many. And prices are reasonable, given the quality of the ingredients and preparation. It's a place a time-pressed traveller could pop into for a beer and a pizza, or kill an hour or two before a delayed flight. We even found ourselves planning a holiday from T2, just so we could come back with the kids. But maybe we won't need to. Given the work that's gone into it, how long can it be before this almost-perfect Perfectionists' Café takes off and lands elsewhere?

The Perfectionists' Café, Terminal 2 (after security), Heathrow Airport, Hounslow. Around £20 a head before wine and service

Food ****

Ambience ***

Service ***