The Editor's Hospitality Blog

John Campbell took me on a tour of his impressive kitchen within the Vineyard at Stockcross, the other day. John's cooking, which won him a well-deserved second Michelin star earlier this year, is based squarely upon the sous vide method. It's a method he promotes with an evangelist's zeal.

I love John's boundless energy and infectious passion for food. As we talked, he grabbed a marker pen off a passing chef and began to sketch out his blueprint for preparing perfectly-cooked cuts of meat on a nearby fridge door, like a white-coated Rolf Harris. I only hope the ink wasn't permanent ...

Of course, sous vide is nothing new, but it's the way John has built the hotel's entire food offering around it that is really interesting. John talks about 'de-risking' the business of serving food, and certainly there's a discernable calmness and order to his kitchen. Already, many eminent chefs are sending scouts down to the Vinyard to witness his system, first-hand.

Incidentally, my lunch at the Vineyard was phenomenal, and threw up some interesting taste combinations, such as lemon curd and scallops.

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I was reading a book called The Perfectionist, about the life of three Michelin-starred French chef, Bernard Loiseau. I'm about three quarters of the way through it now, and thought I'd pass on what I've learnt so far.

Tragically, Loiseau's life story is defined by his suicide, in 2003. The owner of the Côte d'Or restaurant in Burgundy put a shotgun to his own head, rather than continue to bear the constant pressure of retaining his three Michelin stars.

Is The Perfectionist a good book? For me, it's at least a hundred pages too long, and the prose can at times be terribly overworked (quote: "the black truffle … does for French cuisine what a Wonder Bra does for an ambitious ingénue …"!) But as an insight into the world of French haute gastronomie in the second half of the twentieth century, and, in particular, Loiseau's complex world, Rudolph Chelminski's book works both as history lesson and cautionary tale.

I've now finished The Perfectionist, Rudolph Chelminski's account of the life and untimely death of three-starred French chef, Bernard Loiseau. What a sad story.

In my first posting, I described how the first half of the book introduces Loiseau within the context of the great French chefs of the past fifty years. In the second half, the author cements the image of a chef whose gastronomic confidence and lack of personal self-confidence seem to flourish in tandem. We learn of his invention of a system of binding sauces with vegetable purées; and one of his defining creations, frogs' legs with garlic purée and parsley juice, is described in enlightening detail. But at the same time we witness him working ever harder to hone his offering, becoming overly embroiled in building works at his restaurant and incurring mounting debts ("Bernard had mortgaged his future to Michelin").