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Raymond Blanc
World-renowned chef and restaurateur Raymond Blanc is the owner of one of the most prestigious hotel restaurants in the world - Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons in Oxford, England, which has held two Michelin stars for over 22 years.
Born in France, he moved to England in the 1970's and started his career in the UK as a waiter. When the chef was taken ill one day, he stepped into the breach and never looked back. At the age of 28 he opened his first restaurant, Les Quat' Saisons, which was an overnight success, winning him an Egon Ronay restaurant of the year and a prestigious Michelin star. Since then he has added a bakery, a patisserie, a chain of brasseries and Le Manoir to his empire, and his cookbooks are bought by millions.
- Blanc has no formal training, he is a self-taught chef who has gone on to train many other famous British chefs.
- Blanc's mother was the inspiration for his success - using fresh, local and seasonal produce to make meals for her family full of love and goodness. But although she taught his sisters to cook, Raymond had to be happy helping with the chopping and peeling.
- His first job in a restaurant was as a cleaner.
- As a child he was made to work long hours in the family's garden where they grew all their own fruit and vegetables and, like all the boys in his village, he was a hunter-gatherer - collecting mushrooms, fruit and frogs.
- He moved to England after an incident in which he was hit with a frying pan by the head chef at the restaurant he was working at in France - he had suggested that a sauce was too salty.
- The changing seasons were a huge part of his childhood and led to the name of his first restaurant - Les Quat' Saisons.
- Blanc is famously accident prone. He recently fell down the stairs and broke his leg in five places. He once poisoned 200 people with bad oysters at a function at a Scottish castle, and when he used to deliver baguettes from his bakery around London restaurants, he had so many car crashes he used to drive with his insurance details on his lap to save time.
- In 2007 he was awarded an OBE by the Queen in recognition of his services in promoting culinary excellence and for raising awareness of the importance of healthy food.
- Raymond met his fiancée, Natalia Traxel, when she celebrated her 30th birthday at Le Manoir.
- He spurns the shouty-sweary style of chefs like Gordon Ramsay, "it's nonsense that you have to be some sort of fierce, controlling chef - it's yesterday's cliché".
