August 2010 Archives

When I broke my leg six months ago, the Guardian newspaper suggested that I was accident-prone. "Prone" is hardly the word for someone capable of injuring himself in a way that took the skills of a world-class surgeon, Mr Richard Keys, plus the best efforts of a great physiotherapist, David Healy, to finally get me back into the kitchen only last week.    
Each day I undergo four hours of combined torture including 30 minutes on the bike, 30 minutes of steps (enough to kill anyone even in good health), an hour of stretching and weights, and two hours of walking, putting 80% of my weight on the injured leg - and it's hell - and certainly not a romantic stroll.  

David, a tall, strong, taciturn Australian, takes over from the machines: he throws the little Frenchman onto the massage table, and he pulls, stretches and twists my broken ankle; then he flips me over like a French pancake and buries his fingers into the various muscle groups. Oh my God, it hurts, I tell him. David: "Yeah mate, it will." I ask him if he knows the word "empathy"? A long silence is followed by the monosyllable "Nope." Them I remind David - that my goal is to get back to my kitchen, that I have many other deadlines, that my life can't be dedicated exclusively to physiotherapy, and that I have no ambition to become a paraplegic decathlon athlete.)

The day I at last got back into the kitchen, I completely forgot I was still using one stick.  I felt the elation of being back in this wonderful, familiar space, with the familiar faces of Gary, Benoit, Carl and all the others. When you go through that door, the smell hits you first, the fragrance of sweetness, and the savoury aromas of browning reactions, and then that, strong kitchen light over the work surfaces, a light for cooking, shimmering over the shiny smooth stainless steel full of hard angles.

Although my parents were working class, food was at the heart of our family and we ate like kings. Once a year, my parents would take all five of us to a Michelin starred restaurant for the experience, and as a treat. French working class people always ate well and treated themselves, because it's integral to our national culture, where everyone aspires to eat well.

When I arrived in England and opened the Quat' Saisons way back in 1977, I brought this culture with me. We won our second Michelin star in our little Quat' Saisons, where the kitchen was 2.5 metres square, and the restaurant had no frills whatsoever: just plain red and white tablecloths, cheap prints on the wall, and only the image of a cockerel to remind anyone who had any doubts  that the restaurant was French.

When I opened Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons it was a shock, as all the values that my parents taught me were in contradiction with my new surroundings. In Britain food was exclusive and class led, luxury was signalled by gold, by heavy carpets, chintz and portraits of ancestors looking down at you in a disapproving manner.

The protocol of the table was so stifling that guests would sit upright on the edges of their seats, and talk about education, schools, the weather or other mundane subjects - and never, ever about food.  I watched my guests eat their soup, a dreadful gesture of this spooning away perpendicularly to their upright body, then remarkably bringing the spoon to their lips, and never slurping or making any noise. (The very idea of sipping the soup completely ignores the fact that a little slurp will bring oxygen into the mouth, cooling down the soup and developing its flavour and taste.)

I didn't want to create a French nose bag restaurant, nor just a place for a few rich people; but a place where anyone in Britain could come to celebrate a special moment in their lives. I wanted to make luxury as inspiring and inclusive as food in England was class-bound and exclusive. I also knew that, though everything I wanted to achieve has been lead by ideals, it must be commercially viable.

So I set up a huge programme of change - I created a small French revolution, and no doubt upset a few ancestral taboos on the way:
 

1. Never say no
2. Share my vision with everyone, so each team member owns it
3. Create a culture of welcome, of well being and nurturing your guests
4. Remove haughtiness and replace it with warmth - I had to work with my team to get them to share the same vision of creating a place of joy and celebration
5. Train, train, train people so as to empower them, and make them confident and strong. Let us give respectability to our industry
6. Demonstrate that we have a culture of mutual respect, and the ability to share generously our knowledge
7. Make it clear that, while the standards of excellence don't change, the details do
8. Teach the sommeliers not to inflict their knowledge on the guests, but to share it with them
9. Change the dress code completely. Remove gentlemen's jackets, undo their ties. Help them to be less British, and simply enjoy a great meal and special moment, in a warm environment without the stuffiness.

"Fashion fades. Only style remains the same." - Coco Chanel

The idea of luxury has changed. Even before the October 1986 "Big Bang" in the City, there was a lot of new money sloshing around the UK economy. Suddenly there was a younger, newly rich clientèle, some of whom were eating and staying in smart restaurants and hotels for the first time. Oddly enough, though, luxury then did not imply plentitude or even generosity: This was the heyday of hard-edged, antiseptic 80s  "Design," when the cutting-edge idea of a dining-room (and even a bedroom) was a stark white cube sparsely equipped with stainless steel furniture.

Food fashion was similarly Spartan. High-end nosh meant severely geometric white plates with a smattering of protein and a slick of sauce, a minimalist mimicking of the French nouvelle cuisine that had flourished ten or 15 years earlier.

Of course minimalism, like the nouvelle cuisine itself was a reaction to the excesses of the immediate past, to over-upholstered brown furniture and over-floured brown sauces. Chairs and sofas were overstuffed, and portions of food were too large - in both cases apparent generosity was more important than quality. Nobody wants to go back to the furnishings or the food of the 70s.

So what constitutes luxury today? Quiet comfort, absence of ostentation, an appreciation of tradition and a sense of responsibility now all count for something. We are aware of the fact that, for virtually every guest who comes to eat or stay with us, Le Manoir is a "destination." That means that people arrive here with specific expectations as well as the hope and intention of having a pleasurable time.

We're in the happiness business, and what makes people happy changes from time to time, and even from season to season.

Just now, luxury is about having your own space and owning your own time, rather than ownership of goods. Even the very rich find it easier to buy an expensive watch than to find a work-free day to spend with their family and friends.

For many guests, Le Manoir is not just a treat, but also a refuge from the everyday. Many of our guests are people who have a good deal of stress in their lives. From the moment we start school, until well past the time we retire from work, modern men and women seem always to have to perform and compete, to outwit and out-talk others, and to live in a culture of winning; we're always being asked to give more to our peers, employers, or shareholders.  More and more our guests are exhausted and burdened by being under constant pressure, with little time for themselves and even less for their families.  Society has changed dramatically, and so have our ideas of luxury, design, service and especially food.

Travelling via Ryanair is not the most romantic way to start a holiday. But they fly to Toulon, which is the nearby airport, from which it takes only 20 minutes to arrive at my favourite hotel in the South of France. When using cheap airlines, the challenge is to measure the inconvenience and discomfort against the financial gain. Is it worth suffering for one and a half hours to gain - for example, a Gucci dress for your wife costing £800, or a couple of 3-star Michelin meals? After all, you could take BA and have similar treatment - and pay three times as much. My policy now for all short-haul flights is the cheaper the better - it's worth suffering a little bit. Long-haul I'd always take business class - when you need to be fresh at your destination, it's worth the extra fare.



Every year for the last five, Natalia and I have chosen the same destination Le Club de Cavalière & Spa near Le Lavandou. You may wonder, why anyone should go year after year to the same place when there are thousands of exotic venues to discover? Some of you might even believe that I have become  a creature of habit: that the comfort of the familiar is so much greater than the pleasure of finding something new. But no, the reason is that it's simply a joy to come back again to a place where everything is right. First, it is the only hotel on the whole French Riviera that has its own beach - crystal clear water at your feet. Second, it is a Relais Châteaux, so the standard is high. On the other hand, because it is a beach hotel, it is casual and relaxed.  You do not have to dress up; the food is wholesome, delicious and simple; the wines, mostly rosés, are fruity and fresh; the team looking after you attentive. The other guests, an interesting mix of intellectuals, businessmen, writers and artists, keep coming every year; they have become our friends.



Life there is uncomplicated and stress free. The days pass lazily, marked by the most delightful routine. Room; down to the restaurant on the edge of the sea for breakfast, adorned by the most glorious buffet; newspapers; then, armed with a couple of good books, you go to the beach or the pool. My current reading is a novel, "Any Human Heart" by William Boyd, a simply terrific tale about life, creativity and stillborn ideas; and "The Science of the Oven" by Hervé This, a little book that should be on every kitchen bookshelf.