SERVING SUGGESTION.
Frog’s legs, definitely: On the basis that you should try everything in life once except incest and folk dancing, it just has to be the frog’s legs. Besides, that particular dish isn’t actually on my menu for tonight and I feel like being an awkward customer. Purely in the interests of research, you understand…
For this is Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons -an idyllic 15th century manor house at Great Milton, near Oxford needing scant introduction- the front door to which lotus eaters and gastronomes alike have been beating a path ever since one Raymond Blanc opened his restaurant there in 1984.
Since then, Le Manoir’s reputation -abetted by two Michelin stars- has burgeoned to the point where those that can afford to stay there ricochet back with such regularity that you begin to suspect they’re permanently attached to the bedposts of their favourite suite by a giant length of elastic. Whilst others must take recourse to the smashing of piggy banks, the theft of pocket money from children and the threatening of commuters with an accordion in order to raise the requisite readies.
Yet it seems that, whatever the wallet size, all who stay share one thing in common thereafter: Hunting down anyone at all with a disparaging word for Le Manoir relegates the quest for the Holy Grail to a task about as taxing as a trip to the corner shop in search of a daily paper. Indeed, to date, I know of just one person less than entirely gruntled with Monsieur Blanc’s work at Le Manoir: His name is the Hon. David Bewicke-Copley and, as Lord Cromwell, he owned the house until his death in 1982. Lady Cromwell had a premonition that her late husband would be unhappy with the sale of the house and was proved entirely correct when, as a poltergeist, he subsequently set about regular bullying of the bedding and bathroom in the master suite until a local priest was brought in to soothe his troubled soul.
Today, no less than 167 members of staff are here to ensure that guests of Le Manoir’s restaurant and just 32 rooms -all of sufficient opulence to ensure most mere mortals will handcuff themselves to radiators in an effort to extend their checkout deadline- suffer no such tribulations at the hands of either the living or, indeed, the dead.
For the key to Le Manoir’s success is not simply that Monsieur Blanc has created a ridiculously comfortable country house hotel and allied it to the gastronomic experience of a lifetime. What really sets your time here apart, as if that were not enough, is the extraordinary lengths the staff will go to to ensure you have a, frankly, fantastic time. Service second to none is the true driving force behind Le Manoir. It’s what brings guests back again and again. And, I’m happy to say, it’s what brings me here to live the life of Riley for 24 hours, chat to the great man himself about how he strives to keep Le Manoir at the top of the paying guest pile and, with no little trepidation, spend a day at the mercy of Le Manoir’s Ecole de Cuisine…
So, though I could only ever aspire to the Michael Winner class of cusedness, I have taken a conscious decision to conform as little as possible in the interests of establishing just how sanguine the service remains when stretched. Which means, immediately upon arrival, changing my allotted appointment with the dining room on the grounds of outstanding work. “Work? At Le Manoir?” comes the bemused smile. “Oh, I shouldn’t do that if I were you sir…”
Nor, in truth, do I. My room is called Vettriano after the artist who’s work adorns the walls. It is one of a scant handful of new rooms at Le Manoir in which RB -as everybody calls him- has personally designed the decor. He has taken a clear decision not to expand Le Manoir further since he believes that this might herald the loss of the levels of service required by his exacting standards. Nor does he believe in imitating the ubiquitous. There is, for instance, no mini-bar buzzing warm in the corner of my room; just pick up the phone and, by the time you’ve turned on the bath taps your required heart starter will have arrived. Correctly served in the correct glass at the correct temperature, naturally.
In fact, so rapidly am I seduced by the comforts of my room that, big red bow hung on my door in lieu of a plastic Do Not Disturb sign, I instantly shun the laptop in favour of an hour or so under a heap of steaming bath foam larger than you’ll find spawning monsters on the average Dr. Who set.
A phenomenal act of will power restrains me from taxing all to the limit by choosing to dine in Scuba diver’s fins and a bee-keeper’s helmet. So, late and still post-bath blotchy
nonetheless, I’m whisked off to a room which makes my house look as if someone recently lobbed in a live hand grenade, shut the door and walked away. Here the arrival of tonight’s menu, another short slurp, a wine list thick enough to stop a bullet and a tray of 7 different appetisers to die for exactly coincides with my crash landing in a chair.
On my behalf, Le Manoir have proposed that I try all 7 courses of the Menu Gourmand. But this is a story about service. So, in a selfless act for BMW magazine readers everywhere that I may regret for so long that pitching up here as a poltergeist myself one day is not out of the question, I pick random dishes from all quarters of the menu instead, and wait for the fireworks. The last time I tried such swimming against the tide in a celebrity driven establishment, the head waiter quivered like a whale trying to scratch his own back and all but expelled me on the spot. Tonight, though, I’m neither patronised nor pronounced potty and, yes, of course they’ll choose the wine for me. Burgundy with fish sir? Why ever not?
Eating alone can make even the most belligerent trencherman feel awkward, but I’ve been thoughtfully stowed in a peaceful corner of the dining room where I can people-watch with impunity and work out how, exactly, you eat a frog’s leg with any degree of decorum. The taste, by the way, strikes me as chicken with a faintly bitter afterburn; the wild mushroom risotto accompaniment speaks for itself. Waiters and sommelier glide to and fro like unhurried blobs of mercury on mirror glass. A warm finger-bowl complete with lime slice iceberg (the lemon of the 90s) appears an instant before I realise it would be rather handy. Wine arrives as you require it, rather than at the profit rate at which some restaurants would care for you to drink it. And you will not be shot for requesting either salt or pepper. Most astonishingly of all, every time I return from a cigarette excursion (a minor gripe) a fresh table napkin replaces my discarded original; like sitting down to a newly laid table every time.
I regret that my memories of the evening somewhat loose their edge from here on in. Yet, strangely, my taste buds still recall flavours almost at will to this day. Each dish is described, without undue reverence or pompous fanfare, on arrival. By now, with the grape quietly gaining the upper hand, a welcome reminder… Proceedings finally close with coffee, 7 petits fours to balance the appetisers that woke the
taste buds earlier, and the realisation that I may inadvertently have become just marginally over-refreshed in light of what lies ahead tomorrow…
Filleting a whole turbot at 9.00am with a knife sharp enough to part Captain Bird’s Eye from his beard without recourse even to shaving foam is a task best not performed with a head thicker than a circus strongman’s thigh. That is, needless to say, exactly what the next day brings. And only the watchful eye and careful tutelage of Course Director Alan Murchison prevents me from bleeding profusely all over Le Manoir’s Ecole de Cuisine.
I’ve joined the course for a few hours of its four day duration and, just my luck, today is fish. Happily fish this fresh doesn’t smell, it simply glares back and, long before the hour at which my body normally even allows speech, I’ve already been taught to differentiate turbot from brill by feeling out the warts on a turbot’s back. “The turbot is the David Beckham of flatfish” considers Alan. By this Mr. Murchison does not mean that all turbot boast a dubious hair style and a wicked right foot, simply that turbot is fiendishly expensive: “But you can serve most people brill at home and they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”
Thus the day progresses. Astonishing feats of haute cuisine conjured up in ludicrously short spans of time, blended with practical lessons and tips, and garnished with the wit, wisdom and painstaking attention to detail of one of the greatest kitchens in the country. And all at first hand: Up to 40 people may be found working in these kitchens at any one time, and the cookery school opens wide onto one end of them allowing for mind boggling spectating and constant forays so that students may discover at first hand why Le Manoir employs 10 full-time pastry chefs and what, for instance, the inside of a pike’s mouth feels like.
It’s a legendarily hard life working your way up through a professional kitchen. No more so than at Le Manoir, where preparing food the RB way includes important little details such as scrubbing the stoves, top to bottom, with emery paper after each and every meal. “You’ve more chance of getting away with armed robbery than surviving your first year as a restauranteur” Alan confesses whilst preparing his party piece; grilled mackerel on pan fried rocket with salsa in
three minutes flat. “So don’t ever let anyone tell you they’re too busy to cook…”
Concentrating headache hard, I find myself able to more or less keep pace with the wealth of information, ability and sheer attention to detail that Alan puts into each dish. But then, with one simple sauce, he pops the balloon of culinary confidence burgeoning in every student in the room at a sip: It’s a Sauce au Vin de Gewurztraminer which, after painstaking preparation we are invited to taste and comment upon. “Delicious” is the universal response. “No” replies Alan calmly. “It’s actually rubbish, and wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near guests of this kitchen” Then he puts things right with the application of thimblefuls of wine, tasting each time until, eighth time lucky, he professes it perfect. Now, I could, in truth tell the difference, but I’ve a sneaking suspicion that I could no more learn to create something that utterly spectacular in my own kitchen than successfully swim the Channel in Wellington boots.
Enter, bang on cue, the man who was so hard up when he first arrived in England in the early 70s that it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that’s exactly how he first crossed La Manche himself. A chorus of “Morning Chef”s punctuate Raymond Blanc’s progress through the kitchens to the cookery school wherein he marches straight up to a slab bound school of mackerel and gently presses his fingers into each one. “Perfect” he mutters before exchanging pleasantries with the less edible occupants of the classroom.
Now, the last double Michelin starred chef I had the pleasure of interviewing put me immediately at ease by reporting that the extension works currently underway to his house were paid for entirely from the proceeds of successful litigation against the press. What a pleasure, then, to find myself sitting in RB’s tiny office dominated by a canvas big enough to fill one entire wall, talking about arts. One of which, for RB, is definitely food.
“When I first arrived here, English food was absolutely disgusting” RB considers. “But now the British have discovered that food is part of our culture and restaurants are doing very well as part of our lifestyle scene.” The down side of which, I suggest to RB, is that in all too many restaurants of repute we’ve reached a position where the customer is always wrong…
“Nowadays there are just so many customers; queues at every door” he says. “And the problem is that the more the restaurant stands at the very top of the pile, the more the customer has become a transient object to be processed rather than served. Then, of course, if he dares to complain he will be treated in a very offhand manner. This is the danger linked with the fashion element associated with chefs today.”
Does he then frown on the current trend of chef as media celebrity? “But you forget” he reminds me, “chefs have always been celebrities; ever since the 15th century: Food is part of the power game. You have a beautiful country house to which you invite your friends and, through the style, resplendence and beauty of the food you establish your power in the eyes of your guests. Chefs were always instrumental in crystallising the power base of the great knights, the great kings. What you fed your guests was a very important way of reasserting yourself as a leading person in society. And that, as chefs, was our job. Celebrity has always been there” RB assures me. It’s just that changes in the media over the last few decades have put it far more in the public eye.”
Elsewhere in Europe, I suggest, there is no stigma attached to service; being a waiter is considered a good respectable job. But in England we’ve always had a tendency to frown upon it… “I think it goes back to the days of empire” RB muses. “And a lingering feeling of servitude rather than service. Scholastic achievement has always been applauded in this country. Service and craft, no. To be a chef you had to have a frontal lobotomy, be a social outcast and an academic reject. The managers too; they were the people with bad A levels unacceptable to any university, so they could go to that horrible, grey, stainless steel world and join the chefs.”
“And the lowest of the low, the very bottom of the pit, was to be a waiter. because you were actually serving at the table; an act of servitude. That’s how it has been looked upon in England these last hundred years. Elsewhere in Europe, the service is all part of the profession; the bottom rung of a ten year ladder, but you’re in an established profession. I started as a waiter, remember.”
Today, RB has a dozen different nationalities working in his kitchens, and no complaints about the English contingent. “But
front of house service is still a problem for them” he believes. “They still don’t have that natural ease… Not yet, not yet. I want someone who is truly happy and proud to make someone else happy. It may sound like a cliché, but that’s what I want. And the guest notice; they know it immediately. You’re not treated like a walking credit card here; just good, old fashioned service carried out with discretion and passion. That’s what I teach these days; passion. I teach, teach, teach people to be great craftsmen and great managers” he smiles. “Excellence is sexy…”
Indeed it is. It requires a superhuman effort of will to leave the quiet luxury of Le Manoir. Especially considering that I am now better trained than RB himself: I have spent just one day in his Ecole de Cuisine. He has never had a cookery lesson in his life.