This will be the year
"What I am doing here is not about making money, it is about creating something special. It is like building another Le Manoir" - the passion in Raymond Blanc's face when describing why he is expanding his two-Michelin-starred Manoir Aux Quat'Saisons is obvious.
He was talking to 70 guests from all over the UK who attended the third Chef Eats Out lunch, which Blanc hosted at the 15th-century house in Great Milton, Oxfordshire, last week.
It is easy to see why Blanc is so passionate about the renovation work. After a three-year battle with the council and local residents, he finally won permission to begin work in July last year. His £3.5m plans include adding a £500,000 staff accommodation block, increasing the current 19 bedrooms by 13, and building a new private dining room, preparation rooms, and a cookery school.
To secure permission, he had to drop plans for a £4m spa that he had intended to build in conjunction with fashion guru Hubert de Givenchy. Blanc, however, is not afraid to admit that the spa is crucial to the development of Le Manoir, and he is still fighting for it. "The spa is essential for us," he says. "It is going to be the best in the country [when we get it]." He is determined to win and adds that Givenchy is prepared to wait for Le Manoir to get the necessary planning permission.
The first phase of the building work now under way is due to finish in April, and Blanc believes that he will then be able to show the planning authorities and local people that he has not created a monster. He hopes this will aid his chances of getting approval for the spa.
Also during April, Blanc and his chef de cuisine Jonathan Wright are to launch a new menu. Blanc adds that the new kitchens and the menu will help Le Manoir regain its pre-eminent culinary position, from which he admits it had slipped because of the pressure on the kitchen to cope with its annual 57,000 dinner guests.
Guests at the Chef Eats Out lunch were greeted with a glass of Champagne and a tour of the property, including the gardens, where Blanc's own vegetable patch contains 20 different types of organic vegetables; the kitchens, which boast a brigade of about 40; and some of the 19 bedrooms.
Blanc is proud to say that the menu which was specially created for the Chef Eats Out lunch by him and his team features the "type of good, wholesome, French food" that he firmly believes in.
The five-course meal, at a cost of just £40, included fricassée of langoustines; ravioli of quail's egg, spinach, Parmesan and Périgord truffles; pan-fried red mullet on a squid-ink risotto; braised boned oxtail; and a choice of desserts - millefeuille of Valrhona chocolate tuiles with ganache, pralines, pine kernels and almonds, or an exotic fruit kebab.
When asked about the braised boned oxtail, Blanc says that the menu was decided before the recent Government ban on beef on the bone, although all guests were now eating fillet of oxtail.
Most guests were in agreement that the first two courses, the assiette apéritive (tuna millefeuille with mooli cooked in a bonito stock with a Thai vinaigrette and coriander cream and caviare) and the fricassée of langoustines, showed the Japanese style of cooking that Blanc is renowned for. Rosemary Ambrose, catering manager for East Berkshire NHS Trust, was amazed by the coriander that came through very strongly in the tuna millefeuille.
But it was the oxtail fillet that drew the most admiration from guests, each piece of meat having been individually deboned and then stuffed. Philippe Wavrin, chef lecturer at the Cordon Bleu school in London, said that out of all the dishes, he believed it was technically the best. "It is so much work for such a cheap piece of meat," he says. "You might prepare it on one night for 10 people who might just order it, but preparing it for 80 is just amazing."
Blanc seems delighted that, with the majority of the building work now under way, he can devote more time to his first passion - cooking. "This three-year fight has kept me away from my kitchen," he says. "I found the whole thing so draining because it was politics." However, talking to the lunch guests, Blanc looks like a man who can at last afford to relax, if only a little. "This year is the year when everything is going to happen for us," he concludes. "Yes, this will be the year."
