Everybody loves Raymond
Raymond was unimpressed by requests to kiss the cook
Raymond Blanc is very, very French. Though he has called England home for over 30 years, everything about him screams stripy polo-necks and camembert; he says what he means, and he says it with unabashed passion and energy. For some, the culture clash could undoubtedly grate and he could be labelled rude and pretentious • the old story of Franco-British relations. On the other hand, others could find his brutal honesty and openness refreshing, and his unguarded self-expression exciting.
Striding across his restaurant, arms outstretched in welcome, a warm smile splitting his face, Raymond Blanc instantly projects conviviality and charm. Though of average height, and only slightly rotund build, his presence fills the room and he is confident and at ease, booming out a genial greeting with a softly accented voice. He is impressive and commands respect; the consummate chef. But Blanc, a man widely regarded as amongst the best chefs in the world, is entirely self taught.
“I did my apprenticeship at my maman’s,” he explains. It was at the age of 21 that, having seen a chef flambéing a sea bass through a restaurant window, he finally settled on his career. He found a job in a local restaurant as a dish washer and later progressed to waiting tables. It was while he was working here that he ended up in hospital with a broken nose and jaw after he was hit by a large pan thrown by an enraged chef. Blanc had been insulting his cooking.
Perhaps this incident has formed his distaste for the approach taken by those such as Gordon Ramsey in the kitchen. “The problem now is that nobody wants to enter my profession; of course you don’t want to when you see a programme like Hell’s Kitchen and the terrible culture that it propagates. Would you send your child to a kitchen? Of course not: that culture of fear and abuse does to us unknown damage. That does not portray our industry.
We met at Le Petit Blanc in Jericho, one of five bistros of the same name which, along with Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons, today make up Blanc’s petit empire. The chef is proud of the fact that he has not sacrificed the quality of his businesses by over-expanding. “If I had grown a chain I would have been a million times richer. Would I be richer in my soul? I don’t think so.
This is an attitude not heard very much these days, and the cynic inside me would normally have set some alarm bells ringing. But its hard not to be completely won over by this imposing Frenchman. That level of singleminded passion could only be genuine, and never was this more apparent than when he was working. “Remove the jackets, let’s have fun,” he said, in the manner of a primary school teacher more excited by the prospect of finger painting than his charges.
Nervously, we followed him into the immaculate kitchen of Le Petit Blanc and clustered around a bench covered by piles of fresh meat and some “here’s some I prepared earlier” chopped vegetables. Over the course of an hour I was shown how to prepare three types of soup, coq au vin, and the old English favourite which the French have apparently just discovered and are raving about • crumble.
Clearer than ever was Blanc’s desire to educate, to make us better, healthier and more responsible consumers. Ethical considerations are of paramount importance to Blanc. “I am quite happy to guilt trip to make people realise what they are doing when they conveniently forget what it takes to grow a £2.80 chicken. It takes so much misery and torture every day for that poor beast. That is disgusting, disgraceful for a country. We should know better, we really should know better.
I guiltily examine a pale, watery example of one of these former ‘poor beasts’, noting how easily the flesh comes away from its brittle bones, compared to its more expensive, organic counterpart, which sits smugly nearby. Blanc’s anger and frustration at the way food is perceived in Britain is palpable. “Your culture has been so messed up. You’ve lost everything in Britain, and I mean everything.
You embrace so completely, more than America, or definitely as much, fast food and cheap food and every processing and every marketing to create this incredible food culture, so much so that 80 per cent of British people spend £2.80 on a chicken. Never mind the taste and texture because nobody’s interested.
You have been manipulated and programmed into demanding cheap because food is not a priority… A mum is more likely to buy a pair of Nikes, or a Gameboy or a cool t-shirt for a son or daughter rather than put five quid extra in the shopping basket.” It is little wonder that Blanc has such an ardent passion for fresh produce, and is so out spoken against the British fast food culture. As a child, he would routinely help his father in the family garden, growing fresh fruit and vegetables.
He would slaughter chickens, and would go out with his brothers to collect wild produce for the table. “My father had all the knowledge and all the secret maps of the wild mushrooms, the wild asparagus; where they grew. The wild asparagus hunt was unbelievable, that was the most romantic hunt. We would walk through the huge forests, and at night we would sometimes lose ourselves, find a nice patch of moss and sleep outside, no problem. My mother would not worry about us; that’s how it was.
Because of his upbringing, where family life was organised around food, and where all food was fresh and natural, Blanc is vehemently against the growing popularity of molecular gastronomy, made famous by the success Heston Blumenthal, whose restaurant, The Fat Duck, recently gained its third Michelin star. “I do not want to be titillated by a piece of food with bicarbonate inside which explodes in my mouth. That doesn’t excite me.
On the other hand, real food, intelligently cooked, with a great bottle of wine, shared with a few friends to me means so much more. When it becomes too intellectual it’s like intellectual masturbation.
For most of our time together Blanc had been quietly enraged about one aspect of eating in Britain or another • at one point he looked at us and, only half-jokingly, demanded, “Why are you such a failure as a nation?” • but the good intentions and good sense of the man were so disarming that I was inclined to shrug ruefully, rather than reply with something indignantly patriotic. Anyway, he is not completely negative. “Good things are happening.
I’m amazed how quickly things are changing and it’s exciting what’s happening… We are going to get a better food chain because that is what the consumer wants and the government is starting to do something… The fast food chain is going to reinvent itself. In America, MacDonald’s has come out with a type of Mexican food which is quite delicious and fairly healthy. It had to; you, as a consumer, are changing.
And it is perhaps thanks to people like Blanc that this change is taking place. Though his frankness • if you will excuse the pun • may grate against English sensibilities, it is diffi- cult to find anything to disagree with what he says, or even to find a hidden agenda. He is open, (brutally) honest, and passionate about what he does.
5th Oct 2005