FOOD Raymond Blanc Raymond Blanc: ‘When I had a vegetarian menu, everyone looked at me like I was weird’ By Lauren Taylor, PA If anyone can be credited for popularising the idea of a restaurant ‘kitchen garden’ it’s Raymond Blanc.The French chef opened world-famous Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons 41 years ago with expansive grounds – and the concept of ‘garden to plate’ was born. Now, with 250 different organic varieties of fruit and veg growing and 27 acres in total, the gardens aren’t just crucial for the two-Michelin star Oxfordshire restaurant and hotel, but for him personally too. “The first thing I do often is to have a lovely walk, try to gather the day together,” Blanc says. “I go to the Japanese Tea House Garden [one of 12 individual gardens at Le Manoir] when I’m really highly stressed. ‘It’s the most tranquil and peaceful part of the gardens,’ he writes in his latest cookbook, Simply Raymond Kitchen Garden. It’s where he buried his beloved German Shepherd, Prince, and ‘it’s where I sit when I’m a bit broken’.
“The garden plays a huge role at Le Manoir – and in my life”.
King Charles even once spent “three hours in the battering rain” walking around the grounds of the 15th-century manor house, after Blanc had joked to the then Prince during a visit to his Highgrove estate that the royal gardens were “not quite as magnificent” as Le Manoir’s. The prolific chef, who has been a mainstay on cooking and food shows during his career, has always championed the humble veg. Even when it opened in 1984, Le Manoir had a vegetarian menu, which seemed almost courageous at the time – “Everyone was looking at me as if I was weird”, Blanc says. But while the British are traditionally a nation of meat lovers (with vegetables languishing sadly on the side), he’s encouraging us to let them take front and centre for a change. “Vegetables can produce the most extra ordinary dishes, which are tasty, which are healthy as well,” the 75-year-old says.“The health factor is important, as we know we are the nation who has diabetes, strokes, heart attacks and so on. “When handled properly, they are absolutely beautiful dishes on their own. But it’s the fact that vegetables are not ‘sexy’ as such.We are a carnivorous nation. It’s interesting to compare to the Mediterranean diet.The national dish in France is pot-au-feu, of grated celeriac, carrots, courgettes, tomatoes, and whatever vegetables are in season.And every Sunday lunch, you’ve got at least 40 million French [people] who are going to eat this pot-au-feu the same way as you will have 40 million British people will eat roast beef on Sundays.”
Importantly,“vegetables are mostly inexpensive, unless you buy truffles”, he quips. But seasonality is everything, and it’s taken very seriously by Blanc.
The sheer volume of food the UK imports “is quite incredible and sad”, he notes.“Seasonality, for me, means so much, because if it’s seasonal, it’s close to home.That means you don’t
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Photo: Raymond Blanc.
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