My time with Raymond Blanc

July's place to taste: Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, Oxfordshire

Jul 05, 2024

A two-year memoir

One minute you’re watching The Bear. The next you’re getting a tattoo of a knife on your forearm, calling everyone ‘cousin’, and saying ‘behind’ to anyone you pass on the tube.

For those of you who haven’t watched The Bear - which is about a chef returning home to take over his family's sandwich shop - do. It’s funny, fast-paced, and does a good job of showing what it’s like to work in a kitchen. Three things you could also say of this week’s email.

This month’s place to taste is (sort of) Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons in Oxfordshire. Run by Raymond Blanc, this 2 Michelin Star restaurant is where I trained as a chef and, given that one half of Eat My Words recently went for dinner, we thought we’d do a deep-dive on what it was like to work there. The good, the bad, and the absolutely bananas.

This is less of a restaurant review, and more of a memoir of two of the most intense years of my life. Hopefully it’s of some interest.

What I did

I started at Le Manoir in 2013 and was there for two years. Broadly speaking, the kitchen has nine sections which you work your way through (going from hard, to really hard, to really really fennel hard).

1. Canapés and appetisers: most people start here. I didn’t.

2. Cold starters: this is where I started. Typically I’d be responsible for three dishes at lunch, then four or five at dinner.

3. Hot starters: this was my second section.

4. Fish garnish: these are the sauces for fish dishes. I didn’t do.

5. Meat garnish and vegetables: my third section.

6. Fish: my fourth section and were things really start to ramp up.

7. Meat: the fifth and final section I did and easily the hardest.

You then have:

8. Pastry: this is desserts. I didn’t do.

9. Goods Received: essentially the butchery and the people in charge of ordering food for the kitchen and then breaking it down (i.e. carving up whole pigs and fish). You’d have a conversation with them every day to say what you needed. They’d be responsible for stocks (chicken etc.) which you’d have to plan three days ahead due to the time it would take to do them.

An average day

6.45am: I’d pick up the guy I was working with on the cold starters section. On our drive to the restaurant we’d make a plan for what we were going to do that day.

7am: things are a lot better now but, ten years ago, this was our start time.

NOTE: there’s so much hierarchy in a kitchen like this that it took me about a year to get a coffee from the front of house. The vibe was very much 'you’re here to work not to drink coffee’.

7-11am: you were flat out prepping all your ingredients for the day. To make your afternoon easier, your goal was to prep both lunch and dinner in the morning. But, because it was so busy, you could easily fall into a trap of doing just lunch and then doing dinner prep in the afternoon. If this happened, this was the first sign that your day was going to be very very not-good.

11am: we’d stop for leftover fruit salad and bircher muesli from the hotel breakfast (Le Manoir is a hotel which is relevant as you also have to do room service amongst your daily lunch/dinner prep). If you were lucky, you also got a sausage.

This is when the whole kitchen would reset. You’d scrub the floors, do a big wipe down, and get all the ingredients you’d prepped signed off by a senior chef (any of the Executive Head Chef - which was Gary Jones at the time - the Executive Sous Chef, two Head Chefs, two Sous Chefs, and two or three Junior Sous Chefs).

NOTE: while it was harder to go to Gary Jones for sign-off (his standards were just that much higher), his palate was so refined that you learnt so much from him and could bank what the dish should be like from the feedback he gave.

NOTE II: before it gets put in the fridge, anything that is prepped has to have the initials of whoever made it on it, as well as someone from the senior team. It was a bit of a flex if you could show someone your fridge and have everything signed off by GJ (Gary Jones).

NOTE III: if Gary Jones said your lamb sauce was wrong then you’d want the whole world to swallow you up. Over time you understand what he wants and what is needed and, when you get to a stage when no changes are needed, that’s one of the best feelings you’ll have in the kitchen.

11.45am: you’d have to produce a full plate of your main lunch dish, ready for the senior team to test and approve. Everyone puts their tester up at the same time and the senior team work their way through the menu as if they were a paying customer.

NOTE: this is the difference between Le Manoir any many other places. The tester is a full dish whereas most restaurants test individual components because they can’t afford to essentially do a complete lunch for free. There’s such a focus on repetition at Le Manoir and these testing sessions were a great way to check how everything should be presented on the plate.

Midday - 4pm: lunch service begins for around 80 to 90 people.

4-5pm: break. You’re supposed to leave the kitchen but a friend and I would pretend to get in our car to go home, only to return to the kitchen 5 minutes later to prep for dinner. You were always up against it time wise. If I had time then I’d grab a scone from the hotel’s afternoon tea. That was my dinner sorted.

5pm: start setting up your section for dinner.

6.10pm: everyone stops for a reset and a full clean down.

6.45pm: like before lunch, this is when you produce your tester for dinner. Normally it would be two whole dishes as you’d have the classic menu and the tasting menu.

7-11.30pm: dinner service for about 110 people.

NOTE: you’d do a post-dinner clean down but that wouldn’t include the floors. If they were trying to cut costs then you’d clean your own stoves after lunch and dinner, otherwise the Kitchen Porters (KPs) would do them. When polishing the inside of your oven door, the aim was to be able to see your face in it.

NOTE II: if it had been a bad day in the kitchen then one Head Chef would do random spot checks to see how clean things were. If anyone was disrespectful to the KPs, or not stacking dishes/trays properly in the washing up area, then the same chef would send the KPs on a break and all the chefs would have to do their dishes.

My three biggest telling-offs

1. From Benoit Blin who was Head of Pastry. When I was a few months in, I was clearing down the afternoon tea section and taking the leftover bread back to the pastry team. There was a gluten-free roll (in a wrapper I might add) on the same tray as all the ‘normal’ breads.

As I walked to the kitchen I passed Benoit who was on the phone. He put his arm out to sop me, said into the receiver “hold on one minute,” then proceeded to scream in my face “do you think that’s a good idea you fucking idiot?”

2. One night, service was getting a bit out of control and, to speed things up, I used the same saucepan for a dish that was going out on two different tables. It was the same dish, but you shouldn’t re-use a saucepan. A senior chef called me up to the pass and said: “You might be big but I’m not scared of you.” As I walked away he threw the saucepan at me. I dodged it.

3. Different day, but from the same chef: I was running the fish section but, because fish was never that busy at lunch time, I was helping out on the meat section. I had a fish order on and gave it to my fish garnish guy to dress. He messed up and so we were late on the dish.

If you’re in charge of someone, you get the telling off regardless of whether it’s your fault. And so, when I gave the dish to the senior chef he flicked the plate at me and said: “You’ve got 5 minutes or I’m sending you home.” Being sent home is the worst thing that can happen to you.

My most crazy/ridiculous/scary moment

My first New Year’s Eve. This whole period is mad as you have different menus for Christmas Eve, Day, and Boxing Day. You’re then back to your usual offering before another set of new menus for NYE and a NYD brunch kicks in.

On NYE I was responsible for a salmon dish that was part of the gala dinner. I was paired with a senior guy and we were asked for the taster of the dish the night before. The senior guy didn’t show.

With about 10 hours until service I’d still never done this salmon dish which needed to be smoked. Here’s how the conversation went between me and another chef. I’ll start…

“How do I smoke the salmon?”

“Oh you need to get some wood.”

“Right where do I get that?”

“Go ask the gardeners.”

After much running around, I went to one of the hotel rooms to get some wood from a fireplace. I then proceeded to manufacture a smoker in the garden and on we went. While we were garnishing the first of the 150 plates for the dinner service, we were still cooking the salmon.

There’s more to this night of terror than just the above, but the general mood to get across is one of feeling sick to your stomach, genuinely scared you’ll get fired, but also helpless because you have no idea how your food is going to be done in time. Everyone knows when you’re in the shit, but sometimes they won’t help as they know it’s between you and the senior team.

Final thought

Places like Le Manoir are not cheap. Of course they’re not. But I hope that some of the above shows you just how much detail and attention goes into making a dish. There are so many moving parts of a kitchen and everything has to work seamlessly for the day to run smoothly, that’s before you start thinking about hotel guests who want room service or different allergies etc.

I hope the above was of some interest. If not, do carry on with your election coverage.

Speak in a few weeks,

Fraser