February 2010 Archives

Everybody loves Raymond Blanc but his latest tirade has left even one of his biggest fans (moi) slightly bewildered.

To grab a few headlines and promote his latest cookery show, Raymond Blanc's Kitchen Secrets which kicked off on the BBC last night, the French chef has lashed out at the TV industry for sensationalising food.

The two-Michelin-starred chef patron of Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons in Oxfordshire said he had refused offers to appear on reality TV shows including ITV's Hell's Kitchen and the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing.

"I did a lot of shows in the 1980s, but I chose to stop because TV started sensationalising food," he told the TV Times.

"I don't want to be remembered as a prima ballerina; nor do I want to beat people around the head. That's not cuisine - it's sensationalism!"

Raymond clearly has a point here but has he forgotten his very own TV show The Restaurant which gives people with absolutely no hospitality training or experience the chance to run their own restaurant?

Isn't that just a tiny bit of sensationalism too?

Raymond Blanc's The Restaurant winners JJ and James unpopular choice

Top Spanish chef Andoni Luis Aduriz's restaurant has been destroyed by a kitchen fire.

According to reports, a fire broke out at around 2am due to a short-circuit in an area of the kitchen.

Andoni Luis Aduriz told journalists the blaze quickly destroyed the entire cooking area of the award-winning Mugaritz restaurant, in the Basque region on Sunday night.

It took two hours to put out the fire at the two-Michelin-starred restaurant, and neighbouring house had to be evacuated.

You can read more on the fire and watch a video here >>

MasterChef presenter Gregg Wallace's debut as a restaurateur with the opening of Wallace & Co in south London wouldn't even make to the first round of the BBC programme, says Matthew Norman.

While The Guardian's food critic praises the service at the Putney-based café for being willing, he slams the food for being rough and amateurish.  

"It was ­amateur hour this lunchtime," Norman says. "In fact, it was closer to amateur two hours, what with the ­delay between ordering drinks and receiving them nudging 20 minutes. And the service, patchy but willing, was the clear highlight."

Meanwhile John Walsh of The Independent pays a return visit to Rick Stein's Seafood Restaurant in Padstow, Cornwall, and was delighted to find that a refurbishment has refreshed the place and some new exotic dishes give breadth to the menu. However, Walsh describes the prices as "idiotic", with local cod and chips at £17.50 being the cheapest dishes on the menu.

The Observer's Jay Rayner says his experience of The Goring's menu, which is currently reflecting the hotel's centenary, is disappointing. He says the dishes are not of a standard he would expect from such a grand hotel.

AA Gill of The Sunday Times also experiences a bygone age when dining at the French Horn in Sonning-on-Thames, Berkshire. He describes the location as a classy spot for a really poignant, leering date and the food as "Frenchish, francophilic".

Writing for the Daily Telegraph Zoe Williams finds a restaurant of real pedigree in the Soho House Group's latest venture, Dean Street Town House, and is impressed with its classic British menu. 

Giles Coren of The Times says Terroirs is the French equivalent of Polpo, Barrafina and Bocca di Lupo, serving first class food in small sharing plates.

Chris Horridge is to leave his role of executive head chef at Cliveden in Berkshire after just one year.

Following industry rumours last week, hotel group Von Essen has confirmed the chef's departure and announced plans for a restructure and refurbishment of the property.

Cliveden will undergo a "culinary team restructure" across its three restaurants Waldo's, the Terrace Dining Room and the Cliveden Club Restaurant, the group said.

Horridge, who has been overseeing Waldo's, will leave the hotel next month.

Von Essen has also unveiled plans for an £8m refurbishment programme of Cliveden, which will comprise the revamp of its 38 bedrooms as well as all public areas including the restaurants. The company also hopes to introduce a new spa which is currently subject to planning permission.

Nick Romano, chief executive officer at Von Essen, said the company "would like to thank Chris for his hard work and wish him all the very best for the future".

Horridge joined Cliveden last spring from the Bath Priory, where he held a Michelin star. He replaced former executive chef Robert Thompson who had left Cliveden after just eight months to set up his own restaurant on the Isle of Wight.

A Great British Menu contestant Horridge has garnered critical acclaim for his health-conscious approach to fine dining without the use of sugar, dairy or wheat.

Spanish celebrity chef Ferran Adrià has denied weekend reports that he is to permanently close his three-Michelin-starred restaurant El Bulli.

Adrià announced plans to temporarily close the iconic restaurant for two years in 2012 and 2013 at Spanish chef conference Madrid Fusion last month.

But an article in the New York Times over the weekend quoted the famous chef saying that he would close El Bulli for good replacing it with an academy for advanced culinary studies.

The report claimed that Adrià had made the decision to shut El Bulli permanently because he and his partner, Juli Soler, had been losing €500,000 (£435,000) a year on the restaurant and their cooking workshop in Barcelona.

However, Adrià has now denied the report in a Spanish newspaper saying the New York Times had misquoted him. 

"Nothing has changed with respect to the announcement I made in Madrid in January," he said.

"El Bulli will close its doors in 2012 and 2013, and will reopen in 2014."

Spanish celebrity chef Ferran Adrià is to close his three-Michelin-starred restaurant El Bulli for good.

Adrià announced plans to temporarily close the iconic restaurant for two years from 2012-2013 at Spanish chef conference Madrid Fusion last month.

Rumours were rife following the surprise announcement, with some spectators suggesting the chef would retire and hand over the reigns to his team.

However, in an interview today Adrià announced that he will be closing El Bulli for good replacing it with an academy for advanced culinary studies.

The Catalan chef, who has lead the way in haute cusine for almost 20 years, told the New York Times that he has made the decision to shut El Bulli permanently because he and his partner, Juli Soler, had been losing €500,000 (£435,000) a year on the restaurant and their cooking workshop in Barcelona.

"We had planned to use the two years to see how El Bulli could evolve,'' Adrià said. "We've been looking at many options, but yesterday we decided that the foundation would be the most satisfying.''

It's a sad day for the culinary world. But perhaps the start of something new and exciting.

View photos from Madrid Fusion here >>

Luxury hotel group Von Essen is considering a restructure of the restaurant offering at Cliveden in Berkshire. 

The company confirmed that it was looking to potentially reshuffle the operation at the hotel following industry rumours that Chris Horridge, head chef at the property's Waldo's restaurant, was leaving. 

"We are considering a possible restructure at Cliveden and have no further details," a spokeswoman for Von Essen said. 

A restructure of the operation at Cliveden could see the closure of Waldo's restaurant, where Horridge, who declined to comment, has been head chef for just under a year. 

He joined the property last spring from the Bath Priory, where he held a Michelin star, replacing Robert Thompson, who had left after just eight months to set up his own restaurant on the Isle of Wight. 

A Great British Menu contestant Horridge has garnered critical acclaim for his health-conscious approach to fine dining. At Waldo's he offers a nutritionally-balanced tasting menu which contains no sugar, dairy or wheat. 

Matthew Norman of The Guardian is keen to find out why Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester recently achieved Michelin's top accolade of three stars. But having enjoyed a meal that was good and sporadically brilliant, he suspects it may be something to do with the name.

"Then again, perfection is a subjective concept, and I wouldn't wish to discourage any of you who have at least £110 a head to spare," he says.

Meanwhile The Times' Giles Coren declares the Galvin brother's latest restaurant Galvin La Chapelle in east London one of the capital's grandest restaurants.

"They have opened in a bleak financial time and are doing what looks like raging business regardless, because brilliant, original, top-end restaurants that look immediately as if they have always been there are what the Galvin brothers do best," Coren enthuses.

The Observer's Jay Rayner says that if the menu at Cabbage Hall in Little Budworth, Cheshire, wasn't so pretentious, he might have enjoyed his meal there a lot more.

Lisa Markwell, writing in The Independent on Sunday, describes The Artichoke in Old Amersham, Buckinghamshire, as a great neighbourhood restaurant which diners should visit before it becomes difficult to get a table. Having recently reopened following a fire, she says the redesign by Claire Nelson is exactly right, while chef Laurie Gear's food is accomplished.

AA Gill readily admits in The Sunday Times that he has ignored rural restaurants in the past because most of them wouldn't last a week in Putney. After eating a Milan in Wooler, Northumberland, he says that while this is true of the restaurant, the experience also showed him that he needs to eat his words. "Most Putney restaurants wouldn't last a week in Wooler," he says.

The Royal Oak, a tenanted pub run by David Rhys-Jones, the brother-in-law of Prince Edward, in Romney Marsh, Kent, receives a vote of confidence from the Daily Telegraph's food critic, Jasper Gerard.

ITV has been fined £1,660 for animal cruelty after celebrity chef Gino D'Acampo killed and ate a rat on reality TV series I'm a Celebrity Get Me Of Here.

The Italian chef, who was crowned King of the Jungle last December, came under fire from the RSPCA in New South Wales, Australia, after he and fellow contestant actor Stuart Manning caught, killed and cooked the rodent.

The killing happened while the pair was sent into exile and put on meagre rations of rice and beans, which prompted them to eat the rat to get "more protein".

A court in Sydney heard that the rat was initially stabbed with a knife but took a minute and a half to die suffering unnecessary pain in the process.

While D'Acampo and Manning were originally charged with animal cruelty themselves, the charges were dropped after ITV admitted that production staff allowed them to kill the rat.  Apparently their only concern was whether eating the rodent would make them sick, rather than whether they were breaking any laws.

ITV was fined $3,000 (£1,660) and ordered to pay $2,500 (£1,390) in costs.

Restaurants are always thinking of romantic ways to lure loved up couples on Valentine's Day but one operator has taken things a tad too far.

A Canadian restaurant plans to celebrate Valentine's Day weekend by calling on diners to have sex in the toilets. From 12-15 February, Mildred's Temple Kitchen in Toronto is asking its customers to get up close and personal in its unisex loos.

"Have you given any thought to moving beyond the bedroom?" asks its website. "Check out Mildred's Sexy Bathrooms throughout the weekend of Big Love. You get the picture."

It's up to the couples to decide whether they'd like to get down to business before during or after their meal and a special Valentine's Day cleaner has been hired by the restaurant. (Isn't that a dream job?!?)

"We've always had little trysts in our bathrooms. We're taking it to the next level on Valentine's weekend," chef and co-owner Donna Dooher told the Toronto Star, adding she was encouraging customers to bring their own condoms.

And as far as any legal or hygiene concerns go, Toronto Public Health insisted that as long as there's no sex in the kitchen and the loos are being kept clean and sanitised, there was no problem.

And whoever called Canadians boring?!?

Daniel Clifford was amongst a trio of Michelin-starred-chefs who came under the microscope of the restaurant critics this weekend.

Matthew Norman of The Guardian was surprised to find that his much lauded restaurant Midsummer House in Cambridge is being run for the benefit of its customers rather than inspectors. "So it bloody well should be, you might say on noting the price, but it has been a long time since I paid a bill nudging £80 a head (we had just two glasses of house wine between us) without a rush of psychotic resentment," he said.

However, at the Bingham restaurant in Richmond, John Walsh of The Independent experienced the results of a Michelin-starred chef - Shay Cooper - who is has allowed his creativity to run away with itself. "By the end, we were a tad irritated by that common phenomenon: the chef who disregards what you want and gives you what he thinks may impress you," he complained.

Meanwhile Brett Graham, who has just been awarded a second star at the Ledbury, impressed Jasper Gerard in The Daily Telegraph who said the Australian chef was producing some brilliant food.

The Times' Giles Coren and The Observer's Jay Rayner have different views on the Dean Street Townhouse, the latest venture from Soho House Group. While Coren goes overboard in his enthusiasm for the venue, Rayner is disappointed with its traditional British menu. "There is absolutely no excuse for taking peasant food and gussying it up to such a degree that it loses all sense of purpose," Rayner laments.