Raymond Blanc
| Born | 19 November 1949 Besançon, France |
|---|---|
| Cooking style | French |
|
Rating(s)
|
|
|
Current restaurant(s)
|
|
| Official website | |
| http://www.manoir.com/ http://www.raymondblanc.com/ | |
Raymond Blanc OBE (born 19 November 1949) is a French chef, born in Besançon, France. Today he is one of the Britain's most respected chefs[citation needed]. Blanc is the owner and chef at Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons, a hotel-restaurant in Great Milton, Oxfordshire, England. The restaurant has two Michelin stars and scored 9/10 in the Good Food Guide. He is entirely self-taught.[1]
Contents |
[edit] Early life
Blanc was born in Besançon, the capital of the Franche-Comté region in eastern France, between Burgundy and the Jura mountains. While his two sisters were taught to cook by the influential Maman Blanc, his father taught Blanc and his two brothers to work in the kitchen garden. His father gave him a calendar and foraging map for his 10th birthday, and what he collected his mother taught him to cook.[2]
[edit] Career
Training as a waiter, he worked at the Michelin-starred Le Palais de la Bière in Besançon. Fired in 1972 for upsetting the head chef (Blanc offered him advice on how to cook), the manager knew of a job in England.[2]
Not speaking English well enough to survive without a notepad, he was dispatched to The Rose Revived in Newbridge, Oxfordshire, arriving three days after arriving in Dover in his Renault 5 Gordini. Blanc married the owner's daughter Jenny, and the couple had two sons.[2]
In 1977 the couple opened Les Quat'Saisons in Summertown, Oxford: "we mortgaged the house, owed 18 further people, and opened in a corridor between a lingerie shop and Oxfam." An overnight success, he won "Egon Ronay Guide Restaurant of the Year", two Michelin stars and a host of other distinctions.[2]
In 1981, Blanc opened a chain of boulangeries and pâtisseries called Maison Blanc that also contain cafès. There are currently 15 branches of Maison Blanc across the country, including several in London and one in Oxford. Maison Blanc cakes are now available nationwide in Waitrose.[3]
Blanc opened the first of a chain of smaller restaurants, Le Petit Blanc restaurants in Oxford in June 1996. Blanc's stated aim with these was to bring the French philosophy of "good food being central to good living" to the United Kingdom. His desire was to create and serve food that can be enjoyed by everyone – "from the time-conscious business person to those looking for a welcoming family restaurant". Raymond was a featured chef on Great Chefs television, appearing in Great Chefs of the World.[4]
In June 2003, after nearly losing the chain as part of his divorce settlement to Jenny,[2] the four Le Petit Blanc Brasseries (now known as Brasserie Blanc) in Birmingham, Cheltenham, Manchester and Oxford became part of the Loch Fyne Restaurant Group portfolio. Since then a fifth restaurant has opened in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, another in Winchester, and one in Milton Keynes. After the Tunbridge Wells Brasserie recently closed, the chain opened a new Brasserie in the lipstick tower at Gunwharf Quays, Portsmouth. Blanc maintains a share in the business, and continues to be actively involved creating new menus, developing the chef and kitchen teams and participating in the promotion of the restaurants.
On 13 January 2007, he appeared on Saturday Kitchen. In the Omelette Challenge, he came out last because he took the longest to cook an omelette. However, he was nudged up a few places by James Martin, right above Ken Hom, as Blanc produced a black truffle out of his pocket and garnished the finished omelette with truffle shavings.
Summer 2007 saw the BBC promotion for his new reality TV programme The Restaurant airing on UK television. (The show is known to BBC America viewers in the US as Last Restaurant Standing). The promo showed a group of well-dressed diners in a slow-motion food fight, to a Gonzales backing track. The show was aired as part of BBC Two's autumn season in 2007 and returned, with minor changes to the format, in 2008. In 2009, The Restaurant returned to BBC Two in a low-budget format. This season has been much criticised for the poor standard of contestants, for neglecting the successful elements of previous series, and for Blanc choosing as the winner a team without any discernible culinary ability outside of making cocktails.
Blanc is the author of several books, including Cooking for Friends and Foolproof French Cookery. He is also one of the patrons on the Children's Food Festival, which was held on the Northmoor Trust Estate in south Oxfordshire in June 2009.
Divorced from his second wife, psychotherapist Kati Cottrell, Blanc is engaged to Russian nutritionist Natalia Traxel, whom he met when she celebrated her 30th birthday at Le Manoir.[2] His son, Olivier Blanc, works as an assistant director on Talkback Thames's The Bill.
[edit] External links
 |
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Raymond Blanc |
- Raymond Blanc official website
- Great Chefs
- Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons Great Milton, Oxfordshire. RB's 2 star Michelin restaurant
- Hub UK biography
- Social Issues Research Centre article on Blanc's war on sugar
- Who´s Who of Chefs information
- Map of 'Brasserie Blanc' Restaurants in the UK
- Interview with Raymond Blanc OBE
[edit] References
- ^ Hibbert, Christopher (1988). The Encyclopædia of Oxford. London: Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-39917-X.
- ^ a b c d e f "A man for all seasons". BMI Voyager. 1 March 2011. http://www.bmivoyager.com/2011/03/01/a-man-for-all-seasons-2/. Retrieved 7 September 2011.
- ^ http://www.maisonblanc.co.uk/
- ^ "Great Chefs". http://www.greatchefs.com/Raymond-Blanc/.
- 1949 births
- Living people
- People from Besançon
- French chefs
- British chefs
- French expatriates in the United Kingdom
- British food writers
- Michelin Guide starred chefs
- The Restaurant (UK TV series)
- French restaurateurs
- British restaurateurs
- Officers of the Order of the British Empire
- Chevaliers of the Légion d'honneur
