Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons represents a refreshing odyssey into excellence, a philosophical statement of how life should be and how it should be lived. Set in the rolling Oxfordshire countryside, a hymn to high cuisine in Cotswold stone, more than any other house Le Manoir fuels the quiet revolution that has taken place in British catering over the last 20 years. Far from the cries of aux armes citoyens and the bustling street markets of the Franche Comte, Great Milton, Oxfordshire might seem an unlikely base for a revolutionary. With visions of the meat cleaver wielding French chefs of youth I waited with some trepidation in the ante hall at Le Manoir.
Porters had kindled a fire in the oak beamed room you go into after reception. Logs and brush crackled in the open grate, slow to draw. Looking at it I thought of the old French love song where a friend asked the man if he’s crying over a lost love and the man replied “no it’s just the fire, the smoke makes my eyes water”. Then a voice behind me says, “I’m so sorry for the fire”, and Raymond Blanc steps forward not as tall as we automatically assume chefs are. Blanc, trim and enthusiastic speaks an accented English which forwards all the natural passion of the original French. We drink coffee and he disappears to tie up a few other loose ends before lunch. Blanc lives at frenetic pace but is gentle with it. For instance, he no longer drives fast, as he tells me later. “I used to fly along, and then one day I screeched to a halt – it was wet and this old lady was crossing the road. To my horror she came up and thumped my window with her umbrella. M’sieur Blanc, are you trying to kill me? That is the third time this month I’ve nearly been run down by you on this stretch of road.” Ever gallant Blanc leapt out of the car, contrite in the rain, vowing never to speed again. She is, he says, a regular customer! Much of Blanc’s philosophy follows an ideal first and a commercial imperative second.
Nothing disappoints from the cheery greeting of the receptionists to the striking yet simple decor of the rooms and restaurant. “We are not just a beautiful place, an experience, we are trying for something more at le Manoir, something sublime. Everything starts here in the restaurant, the waiters are Raymond Blanc saying welcome.”
Gone are the stern waiters of yester year. Customers range from a Korean family with children, remarkably well behaved, a troika of pensioners out for the day, an elderly businessman kindly entertaining a stunningly good looking girl and two young couples in open neck shirts and jeans. The waiters are predominantly French, kind, accommodating and able to describe each dish in almost flawless English as it arrives.

Blanc sits down to lunch, chatting easily with the staff, quite at ease in the airy dining room, a cheerful testament: “Le patron mange ici.”
“Our industry suffers from an image problem. Chefs are social outcasts, lobotomised. I’m totally self-taught. I started at the age of 22. I looked for my talent, I wasn’t just given it.” Blanc might be firmly in control but it wasn’t always like that. “Back at school I didn’t choose my future – it was chosen for me. I ended up in a horrible world of set squares and triangles, chemistry and physics, I hated this.”
His father, a watchmaker, understandably enough wanted his son to excel in the engineering and technological industry. France is still a culture grappling with the latter day transition from land to city. Young Raymond left and worked as a nurse in the cancer ward of St Anne’s hospital. Hard work wasn’t a problem but fraternisation with the nurses was. French nurses, the stuff of dreams, proved Raymond a cat among pigeons. Incurable, he was encouraged to move on and worked in a clothing factory. Back at home he helped his father at the clockmaking business. Then one summer’s night all that changed. “I was in the heart of the city; it was a full moon, still and beautiful, huge trees blessed the squares and cobbled streets of Besancon. I saw a terraced restaurant, courting couples laughing together and having fun. Lights sparkled in the trees above.
What followed changed Blanc’s life. “The maitre d’hotel laid a freshly grilled sea bass on a table and carved it for two diners. I saw him in action again carving up roast pork with great ceremony. Immediately I wanted to be the chef who created that drama.” Next day Blanc went to see the hotelier and the chef. “I got very enthusiastic and talked and talked. Suddenly the chef got up and left the room. The maitre d’hotel said, you’ve offended him. He’s thinking, that young man is mad. Well I phoned the man back the following day and pleaded for another interview.” This time a calmer, quieter, doucement Blanc undertook to work extremely hard, be clean and punctual. It worked. “They took me on as a cleaner. I tell you that restaurant had the cleanest toilets in town. The glasses sparkled and shone.”
Raymond was thrilled to have discovered his metier and threw himself into it.
“I read everything I could get my hands on. I experimented, cooking at night after work, inviting friends round to midnight feasts until two in the morning.” Already he was developing his own recipes and ideas asking friends for opinions, suggestions, support. His big break came at the Palais de Bière when he was promoted to junior waiter – still not entitled to meet any customers. “I was a commis de brasserie. I drew ideas from everywhere and talked about them freely. My father was a great gardener and everything we had was fresh. He was also a great hunter-gatherer. I tell you at the age of ten I was selling frogs, escargots and mushrooms I’d gathered in the woods around us – I knew where they were to be found just by following my father. Then my mother was a marvellous cook. The table was everything – it was the very heart of the household.”
Blanc pays great tribute to the influence of his parents both in the growing, gathering and preparation of food but equally important in the eating of it. “We sat down to eat and talk; long meals where we talked about everything. This is the basis of civilisation.” Blanc is well aware it is a skill we could lose. Le Manoir is a fight back, a revolt, against the popular orthodoxy of mediocrity, convenience and speed. We sit down at a simple table with a white tablecloth to eat wood pigeons and beetroot.
When did it occur to him to set out and help the rosbifs, the English across the Channel? The answer is not quite as straightforward as that. Young monsieur Blanc could not control his enthusiasm and was forever helping the chef by making little suggestions on how a sauce or a dish could be improved. “Eventually he threw a pan at me,” says Blanc quite philosophical about this. “I was hospitalised and quite badly hurt. The boss came to see me in hospital, having worked out what had been going on.” The boss, a monsieur Robert Spitz, said, “Even I the boss would not do that. Make a suggestion? Pouf! Ecoute moi bien, if I want to say something to the chef I ask for an audience. I make an appointment with him and I go and beg his indulgence.” Says Blanc cheerily, “I couldn’t argue with him. I had my jaw wired.” Spitz knew Raymond could not return to his restaurant. He felt it wise that once out of hospital his young friend left town, in fact better leave the country, mon vieux. Spitz had friends in England – what a debt we owe this remarkable man, sadly departed this life. Raymond Blanc left his beloved Franche Comté on the night express for Paris, the howl of the engine a forlorn echo of the crie de coeur of his pan-hurling nemesis.
Raymond Blanc went to work as a waiter at the Rose Revived Restaurant near Witney in 1972. His break came when the chef in charge fell ill. Up to the range stepped Blanc, full of fire, enthusiasm and ideas. The British loved it. Two years later the restaurant earned a listing in the Michelin Guide. Raymond Blanc subsequently opened his first restaurant, ‘Les Quat’ Saisons’ in Summertown, Oxford and won the coveted Egon Ronay Restaurant of the Year award twelve months later. A plethora of accolades crowded out the mantelpiece in quick succession, including Michelin Stars and Pestle & Mortar Awards.

Ten years later, fired by a vision of a country house and restaurant operating together, Blanc opened Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons. A startling progression for a jaw-wired French clockmaker’s son?
“I was always far more open to ideas, an odd man out in French cuisine. I was not moulded by it as others were. Formed by family, yes, but I’d never worked as a chef. I have this admiration for brilliance which we are trying to achieve. We are what we are because of the past. It makes us rich in every possible way.
What I create here is a place which is classically beautiful – like a Michelangelo or a Piero, an unreal beauty. People may sneer at classical beauty but I think that’s very dangerous.”
Le Manoir goes far further than just providing a good meal, sporting pictures and statues by local artists. The gardens are tastefully laid out. Tucked away behind a hedge is an organic garden. 70% of the vegetables served in the restaurant come from this garden and are fresh that day. A profusion of herbs clouds the pathways. Gardeners at Le Manoir experiment with different seed varieties and staff taste the results before Blanc and his friends decide which strain of lettuces, rocket or leek to proceed with.
Rooms in the hotel itself are warm with eastern decor and furniture. Blanc picks up chests and cupboards on travels in the orient. Every room is spacious, the showers are large and can accommodate two. A decanter of Madeira awaits the new guests, as well as an open fire.
“We take from the past and go beyond today, luxurious, but elegant, warm. We do not need to overwhelm, intellectually. Create well being, again, something intelligent rather than clever. Too much of the smart end of catering is precocious rather than tasteful.”
Blanc has moved away from the rigidity of traditional cuisine while at the same time managing to retain its values. At the kernel of Le Manoir’s success lies Blanc’s ability to romance rather than fuse different ideas.
“We live in a multicultural society where we import ideas from China, Thailand, from all Asia; it plays a huge role. I use their decor, Japanese gardens and in the suites too; it’s inspired but integrated, not a hotch potch. We work carefully to ensure we do not diminish the cultures we applaud. Too many things are mixed up. It took me 30 years to understand my own French culture. Young people fuse seven cultures in one dish! I want to hear about another culture that it might enrich my culture.”
“When we look at a new dish, a herb, a chair or a painting I have to ask: Does it feed the idea? I’ve got to be emotionally involved. I fell in love with Japan, with its gardens, its food, its people.”
Does not this pursuit of excellence sit uneasily in a nation seemingly obsessed with cheap food and faster food? Popular superstition in France has it that the rosbifs care little for intellectuals or the steady digestion of new ideas. Blanc does not agree and is running a flourishing business to prove it.
“The British have been manipulated by governments and business. Over the last 30 years we have started to embrace American values. Producing food faster, bigger and assuming that has to be better.”
“In Britain we know nothing about food. Now the prodigious use of agricultural chemicals, the BSE scandals and Foot and Mouth disease have cost us billions. Farmers are squeezed out by establishment. We have created real problems in the food chain. We have this view that food should be cheap. Through intense farming we have lost the craft of real food and it is pumped full of chemicals. The result is it affects our health. We want to live forever yet we trivialise food. And we pay a price, a very, very high price for this. 25% of our young people are obese. And that’s because 80% of our food is manufactured, engineered. The price is too high and we have a nightmare in the making.”

Le Manoir
aux Quat’Saisons
Church Road
Great Milton
Oxford
OX44 7PD

Tel: 01844 277260
Fax: 01844 278847
e-mail: lemanoir@blanc.co.uk
For further information, please visit our website: www.manoir.com