Raymond Blanc

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 30:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety two, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:28

My castaway this week is a chef. Over the past twenty years he's built up a business which has made him one of the world's most successful restaurateurs and cookery writers. The centre of his operations, a hotel and restaurant outside Oxford, is a temple to his art, perfect, delicious, and expensive. Not surprisingly, he is a Frenchman. Unusually, however, he's never had a single cookery lesson in his life, and he only started on his career when, at the age of twenty, he saw dinner being served as he looked through a restaurant window in his hometown of Besançon. He is Raymond Blanc.

Presenter1:03

Raymond, can you tell me, do you still have that picture in your mind's eye of that dinner being served?

Raymond Blanc1:08

Very much so. Very much so. Actually, it was not a window, it was much nicer than that. Actually it was a beautiful and it looks very cliche and very romantic, but that's the way it was. I cannot I cannot apologize for that. It was uh in the ho the center of my old city, Besançon, Place Victor Gaux, which basically a most beautiful city with huge centenary trees. In the middle of that huge place there was standing this fantastic restaurant. And really what I saw really stirred me very deeply. What I saw was basically the diners were outside, okay, and you had this very old-fashioned uh service where all the waiters were dressed in black, you know, could be, you know, and uh there was lovely carving and flambéing going on. It was really stunning. And what I saw equally

Raymond Blanc1:51

That was disturbing, but mostly that to see the enjoyment of the of the clientele, the very sophisticated lady holding hands and so on. The whole charm, the whole romanticism of it, the whole it appealed to me enormously.

Presenter2:03

So it was the romanticism, it was the style of the thing that you had.

Raymond Blanc2:06

Exactly, the style style, absolutely, is the whole beauty.

Presenter2:09

Where does the food come into?

Raymond Blanc2:11

Well, that was a concept of the food rather than the food itself, because I could hardly see the food. It was quite some distance away. It was uh but it was not it was a concept, the idea of of and I that's when I decided to be a chef, not by seeing the food itself, by but by seeing the meaning of food, that means the sharing, the giving, the enjoyment.

Presenter2:28

But how did you know you could do it?

Raymond Blanc2:30

Well, I didn't know. I was terri terribly convinced. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had found my own career, which I looked for a number of years, because one thing I didn't want to, I stopped school at the age of seventeen, and one thing I was terribly afraid to be is to be a mediocre. That scared me to death. To be mediocre. To be a mediocre, that's absolutely. Imagine clocking in and out in a factory or whatever. So I tried I stopped schools because I was wrongly directed and I was meant to be a draftsman. Boring. And I looked for my own little talent. And I looked for a long time, actually for two years. And I tried all sorts of things. I've been a model. I worked at the Boza for three months. I've been even I wanted to be to become a nurse eventually. But if I b had become a nurse, I would have to become Mother Teresa, nothing else.

Presenter2:45

Yeah.

Raymond Blanc3:15

And unfortunately it didn't work out too well for me because

Presenter3:18

But how did you know, when you saw this wonderful, stylish, romantic scene in the middle of Bazancon that you actually could enter that world and be a success in it? That you wouldn't be mediocre?

Raymond Blanc3:29

Well, I just felt it deep deep inside. I felt totally disturbed. Look at this beautiful food shared by these wonderful people. I said, Yes, I want to be that man. I want to produce that food.

Presenter3:39

Right. Let's let's pause and talk about your music for a minute. Do you play music while you cook?

Raymond Blanc3:44

Uh in the morning, yes, actually uh I was one of the first to to bring uh music in the cuisine. It helps people to relax.

Presenter3:53

Let's have the first record that you'll play on your desert island. What is it?

Raymond Blanc3:56

Well, the first record I've chosen is from Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E-Mina and it's played by Eugenouin, which is my favorite, really mar marvelous violinist.

Presenter5:07

Part of Mendelssohn's violin concerto in E minor, played by Sir Yehudi Menouin, with the Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Ephraim Kurtz. So you've never, Raymond Blanc, had a formal lesson in cookery in your life. Has that been much of a disadvantage to you?

Raymond Blanc5:21

Snow, on the contrary, turned to be a great advantage.

Presenter5:24

Why?

Raymond Blanc5:24

Because I really first believe that chefs are a bunch of autocrats and despots. So that's one good reason for not working under one of them. And secondly, I believe if you have a master who basically take you on by the hand and show you exactly the way, you are more or less the reflection of that man's thought and so on. And hence it just completely narrows the vision and the creativity field. And uh to me that is the factor of being self-taught may have been extremely hard to start with because there's thousands and hundreds of techniques to learn. But on the other hand it left my f my freedom totally intact, invaluable.

Presenter5:57

And do you go on? I mean, you began twenty three years ago with allowing this freedom of spirit to to to fly high.

Presenter6:05

Are you still as curious and as inventive as ever you were towards your cooking?

Raymond Blanc6:10

Creativity is a very weird feeling because it comes whenever it pleases and you don't control it.

Raymond Blanc6:17

And you mustn't panic if it doesn't come and it's for maybe a couple of weeks nothing will happen and suddenly you will feel in the right mood and basically and you'll feel extremely creative and you will that at that time you must actually use uh that wonderful gift basically because it is a small gift. For example, once I was in the Caribbean, in the English Caribbean I may add, and the food was horrendous. Truly so horrendous that basically it it prevented enjoying my holiday, it was that bad. So I started to dream about beautiful food. And actually I chose a lovely palm tree in that little island and I started to dream about food in a very powerful manner. And in that one hour dream I created three dishes. They were fabulous. One was a little the very island I was in, okay, which was really a mousse of coconut surrounded with pineapple slices and so on, candied, with the little palm trees over it. It was really a beautiful little dessert. So you don't dictate it, it just happened.

Presenter7:12

You are, of course, on the whole these days serving to well-off people. I mean, a dinner at Le Manois is, what, about two hundred pounds for two, around about that price. What happens, has it ever happened, that someone has arrived without realising what kind of prices they're letting themselves in for and sat down at the table and, you know, they're stuck?

Raymond Blanc7:33

I thought you might talk about price. But uh it's a it's a lovely little story actually. It was a Sunday afternoon and um there was a lot of chauffeur driven cars outside. And suddenly I saw that little mini

Raymond Blanc7:47

Just passing the gate of the manoir, and suddenly I saw that young couple, about thirty five years of age, feeling very embarrassed of being there with their little battered millie. And I really understood there I mean, that the the goal and the the courage that those two young people had. So I just went to them say and asked them to park their car beside the huge fat holstery, okay, which I did, and I took them in the manoir. You see, they were very much working class people. They felt really uneasy because it was the reputation of the manoir was so wholesome, okay, and they they took the they plugged the courage to come there, so I made sure that they were

Raymond Blanc8:20

brilliantly relaxed, you know, we offer them champagne and so on and chose some food which was not too sophisticated and so on. And they discovered something new with food. Truly they discovered something new. And now they come every year.

Presenter8:30

And did you, and do you, charge them a special price?

Raymond Blanc8:33

Yes, actually I did.

Presenter8:35

But but you wouldn't do that for anybody else, let's make that clear.

Raymond Blanc8:36

No, let's make that clear.

Presenter8:38

Record number two.

Raymond Blanc8:41

It's a poet from a rabo, from uh one of our greatest poets in France, and it's called the the the poet is called Le Poet de Cétance, the poet, the seven-year-old poet, and it's sung by Leo Ferré.

Speaker 29:00

Parla language, pour le voille laure, who rallies on the home for Golf de Journey, by dance trois, and the world.

Speaker 29:09

Il est fermes on la fraicheur de la tribe, il pensé la tranquil, ili vron ce nari.

Presenter9:19

Le Poet de Ceton by Rambo, sung by Leo Ferre. What does it mean? What's it about, Raymond?

Raymond Blanc9:25

Well it's about a mother, a very religious Catholic mother, looking at a beautiful son, beautiful blue blue eyes, curly hairs and so on, and admires him really, just not really knowing what's the turmoil that this young man is experiencing, wanting to change the world, change people, bring hardness in that world, you know, and uh this poet is just expressing all his dreams, all his all his thoughts, all his insight, really.

Presenter9:50

And what about you as the seven-year-old child? I mean, is that a kind of parallel of you and what your mother might have?

Raymond Blanc9:56

Yeah.

Presenter9:57

Not have known what's going on inside your head.

Raymond Blanc10:00

He was quite of a devil actually. I was I was not of the greatest young young man, but basically I I was uh maybe less controversial than he was. But tell me about the family.

Presenter10:08

But tell me about this family. It was a it was a a big family, a large family, lots of brothers and sisters.

Raymond Blanc10:13

I come back from a working class family. Uh I had two two sisters and two brothers. I had a very early education of good food, of course, as you would imagine, and my mother would even say claim that my mother was the greatest cook in France. And of course every Frenchman will say so, but it's mildly true.

Presenter10:29

But it this was not exceptional, this w this was standard for family practice where the table is the central part of life.

Raymond Blanc10:36

Well, that's what, absolutely. Um I mean the table is a place, this four-legged thing is a place where you actually sit down and relate to each other, communicate, have fun, laugh.

Presenter10:47

And what sort of food was on your table as a child in Posaso?

Raymond Blanc10:50

Well, my mother's creativity was sparred by poverty and not really by wealth. That means she was able to do miracles with food, really. Sunday roast would be never beef because one couldn't afford it. It would be pork, okay, or or mutton, okay? So we'd have a beautiful and somehow she would manage to do something absolutely stunning. Of course, as well, the roast would be surrounded with all the vegetables from the garden that my father would have grown. Okay, and then basically then you would eat the roast, part of the roast, then the the remaining part would be chopped up very finely, mince, okay, and she would stuff some beautiful tomatoes with the tomato sauce, and it would be absolutely stunning. Then with the remainder, that means mostly bones and so on, she would chop them up finely and do almost stunning s soup. So it was qu always riveting. I always looked at her, you know, with great

Raymond Blanc11:40

with great admiration, because out of nothing and no time she would create a most beautiful meal.

Presenter11:44

But the ingredients were always fresh. Very simple and fresh. Straight from your garden. Absolutely. Or did you collect them in the woods? Did you go to the middle? Oh, yes, there's a lot of.

Raymond Blanc11:46

Very simple and fresh and hard.

Raymond Blanc11:50

Oh yes, there's a lot of chase, obviously, because the wonderful thing about being in the country, especially in the France of the sixties, the fifties, it was really rural France. A peasant was a peasant. You smelled it. You could really okay, and you would uh fetch your milk in the stable and the stable would be next to the cuisine and just one door would would separate them. Okay, and uh you had that marvellous, beautiful food. But equally what was fantastic is very early had a very strong association with the seasons, with their own cycle, what they would bring every cycle, every month. And it would be of course I would be chasing, you know, for wild mushrooms, for the mori, for the wild asparagus, for berries, for wild strawberries, raspberries. I remember scenes that one cannot find anymore because of course all the pesticides and all that have killed all form of life in the forest. And for example, there used to be a cascade of wild strawberries, of raspberries falling from the trees. It was the most enchanting, enchanting uh spectacles, but now it doesn't exist anymore.

Presenter12:51

But as a child you would be sent out to collect the money.

Raymond Blanc12:53

Oh yes, no, I would go for myself. That was fun and great pleasure. For example, let me tell you about Wild Asparagus.

Raymond Blanc12:59

And then when you see an asparagus, never you will think you will you will think the same way about it.

Raymond Blanc13:05

Wild asphagus. It's a tiny little stem

Raymond Blanc13:08

with a tiny little green little head, very fragile, very pastel green, very beautiful.

Raymond Blanc13:12

And uh

Raymond Blanc13:14

You can walk for tens of miles in the forest without finding a single

Raymond Blanc13:19

Not for tens of miles. Walk and walk until you're absolutely tired, and then suddenly.

Raymond Blanc13:24

You will reach a clearing and the sun is pouring in that huge clearing is pouring in and you can see millions of little wild asparagus with their heads in the basking in the sunshine and their feet in the water. It's the most beautiful scenery.

Presenter13:38

Let's have record number three.

Raymond Blanc13:40

Oh yes, it's uh basically the Rolling Stones and satisfaction. It's really part of the wildness of Mayus.

Speaker 214:00

Raise your butts from both

Presenter14:15

The Rolling Stones and Satisfaction. So after you saw the vision of your dreams in the Besancon restaurant, you you became a waiter, first of all. Were were you a good waiter?

Raymond Blanc14:26

At first my

Raymond Blanc14:28

I was not even allowed to be a waiter. I was not even that. I was a comi debarrasser. I mean I only clear the plates from one table to the other, but never approach a customer. But that I even took it very seriously. So when I became the a waiter and able enabled me to approach a customer, yes, I became a very good waiter and full of purpose, full of ideal already as well.

Presenter14:52

Why do you think it is and I I mean it's a generalization, but I think it's accepted as being true that the English don't make particularly good waiters, whereas the French and the Italians certainly do.

Raymond Blanc15:01

Yeah.

Raymond Blanc15:02

Well, service has always been a very difficult thing in England to provide. There's too many connotations with servitude. So I find British very awkward. Either they get extremely pompous and distant and haughty, okay, or they become subservient, okay, and they completely obliviate themselves.

Presenter15:20

Tell me then about when you first came to England and your first experience of an English waiter.

Raymond Blanc15:26

Oh dear, that was rather a horrible caricature which I hope people won't take offense. It's a well I wanted to discover England and really I wanted to take an English boat which I took. I took a British boat to to cross the Channel. And I must say it was the most horrendous experience I ever had at the table. And uh I was not prepared for it. Truly I was not prepared for it.

Presenter15:48

This was on the fairy list.

Raymond Blanc15:49

Yes, I came with great expectation and uh the fairy was absolutely dirty. You know, it its tongue has a horrible scent into it. And then suddenly I saw that shadow approaching me who looked like a waiter. And uh basically his jacket was full of stains, his trousers was up his ankles and so on, and uh he was h it was not combed and so on. And truly it was a horrendous picture. And uh what he let me know is that he was a waiter and he asked me to sit down, which I did. And I asked him in my poor English if what was the specialty in England, you know, what would be the greatest specialty in England. So he told me fish and chips. By the time actually I sat down, I thought it had great reservation about the kind of food I was about to receive. But when the food came, it was much worse than I expected. It was horrendous. The food was reeking of vinegar. I coughed over it. So much vinegar was offending. Okay. And of course the deep fried fish was full of fat, of bad fat, rancid fat and so on. The peas was as big as big as the marbles. And the whole thing was the chips were soggy and sad. It was truly and I had that horrible waiter grinning at me, you know, in his mask of horror. I wonder you didn't have that.

Presenter17:02

I wonder you didn't catch the next boat back home.

Raymond Blanc17:05

Well, actually, I'm much more courageous than that, and I did very well to stay.

Presenter17:09

Record number four.

Raymond Blanc17:11

My next record is a journal in an Imagine. And that uh record I loved it because I just arrived in England and I was the j the world I was about to discover was very different. I was feeling pretty lonely and I had to do a lot of imagination, so that was perfect.

Speaker 217:26

You may say I'm a dream.

Speaker 217:33

But I'm not the only one.

Speaker 217:38

I hope someday

Presenter17:51

John Lennon and Imagine.

Presenter17:53

Now within a year of arriving here in England y you'd begun as a waiter in a restaurant on the Thames in Newbridge in Oxfordshire, the Rose Revived, and wi within a year of that you'd become the head chef.

Presenter18:04

How had you learned to cook in this time if you'd only been a waiter? Did you just start practising on the customers, as it were?

Raymond Blanc18:11

Well, in France, what I've done is to confront the chef with his lack of creativity and uh equally his sources uh I was telling him that his sources were too rich and all what I got is a lot of uh abuse, uh verbal and and physical abuse. Whereas in England uh the chef was actually quite horrendous, you couldn't find a worse chef than that. It was absolutely a nightmare. But I told him that it was great, it was wonderful, and uh and he let me come into his cuisine and that and allowed me to experiment a few dishes from my childhood and so on, and it worked. That was allowed I was allowed in the cuisine on a part-time basis. And when he went,

Raymond Blanc18:48

I was left in that cuisine with two English cordombles. That's when I really took the challenge of uh

Speaker 218:51

Yeah.

Raymond Blanc18:54

Basically cooking for seventy people in the restaurant, which was quite something. And and equally a pub which could sit another two hundred.

Presenter18:58

And

Presenter19:01

And cooking what you wanted to cook, which proved successful because within the first year of doing that.

Raymond Blanc19:01

And

Raymond Blanc19:03

Yeah.

Raymond Blanc19:06

It was a bit cheeky. It was a bit cheeky, I must say, to take the you know, it's like like Napoleon who crowned himself, you know, as an emperor. I croned myself as a chef, so I hope that Escoffier didn't turn in his grave.

Presenter19:15

And then the AA crowned you with one rosette.

Raymond Blanc19:18

Well, that was correct. Yes, it was very encouraging because uh obviously I didn't I didn't know of the A at the time, I didn't know about any guards for the matter, but it was really wonderful because really it was a nice, encouraging reward.

Presenter19:32

And then by nineteen seventy seven, only five years really after arriving in England in the first place.

Presenter19:38

You opened your own restaurant, the Catrices are in Summertown, in North Oxford. And that was an immediate hit. What sort of things then were you offering on your menu that at that point?

Raymond Blanc19:50

I was offering very simple regional cuisine, but already with my food was already extremely light.

Raymond Blanc19:57

That means I always remember doing a scoffy recipe and uh there was lots of cream and butter and so on. So I removed all cream, most of the cream and butter. And that in a way it was shocking to British people. And not all agreed because a lot of them wanted heavy, rich food. But already there was a lot of curiosity, I always remember, because obviously at that time avocado avocado prawns was a it. You must have it on the menu, otherwise you are not a good restaurant. You had to have acavocado prawns. And I remember the

Raymond Blanc20:26

The first day I I put on the menu avocado with ginger.

Raymond Blanc20:31

with scrab and pingre food. People want you know, they told me th as th they thought they told me I was a visionary, you know, and they attacked me, then they lynched me. I was attacked from all sides. After a month, basically, I had to remove the dish from the menu. I had uh I I c I could only give it to people who would understand it.

Presenter20:49

And would you say that really that description of your food that you just gave, that it's quite light and non-buttery and that you don't feel people should feel loaded down at the end of a meal and so on, is that still are those still your guiding principles for that still characteristic?

Raymond Blanc21:00

There's so much morality about enjoying oneself. It's very often that you need to be punished after enjoying yourself. And that's the idea that completely r makes me mad because you shouldn't be punished for enjoyment. You shouldn't. At the contrary, body and mind should be in total harmony.

Presenter21:16

But that's all part of the English guilt, isn't it? At enjoying food and relishing good food and wine, that we sort of feel.

Presenter21:24

There's something greedy about it, there's something indulgent about it.

Raymond Blanc21:26

Well, that is fast changing, thank God. It's rather lovely, actually, what's happening today. It's rather marvelous. After twenty years, really, to see it happening to me to see the change.

Raymond Blanc21:35

Of attitudes of British people to food is quite unbelievable, fab fabulous.

Presenter21:39

And in what way are we changing? We're we're willing to spend more money on it. Just to start with, willing to spend more time on it.

Raymond Blanc21:42

Sure. Time, money. And equally, when you're enjoying yourself, you're saying so, you're expressing it. Which before, first, I mean, you were not allowed, I mean, you're not allowed to it was bad manners to talk about the food when you were eating it. You didn't talk about it, for God's sake. Food was only part of the element of a meal which had no relevance whatsoever. It was more for a social occasion. You choose a restaurant on the kind of ambience it i it it had, on the kind of servility, a degree of servility of the service you had, but not on the food. The food was almost irrelevant.

Presenter22:16

Record number five.

Raymond Blanc22:18

Uh number five, it's a piece by Beethoven, it's a sonata number fourteen, and it's called Moonlight. It's the most romantic, beautiful piece of music I know.

Presenter23:26

Wilhelm Kempf playing part of Beethoven's Sonata No. fourteen, opus twenty seven, number two, the Moonlight Sonata.

Presenter23:33

By nineteen eighty four, Raymond Blanc, you had two Michelin stars at your restaurant, but you wanted to expand, and then you found nearby what you felt was was the perfect place. Can you describe it to me?

Raymond Blanc23:46

It's not a grand house, it's not a temple. It's a it's a house which talks to you, which tells you through the history, through its grandness, through the I don't know, you discover it little by little, you know, it says all sorts of different levels. And when you come into the house, it's full of pastel colours, there's no none of this dark, manly, club-like red, burgundy red, and full of dark wood, where you have ancestors looking down at you in a disapproving manner. All conduce is conducive to joy and fun and to celebration.

Presenter24:15

And it's a manor house. It's a Jacqueline manor house, isn't it?

Raymond Blanc24:17

Actually it did uh it did upset a little bit the villagers when I took over in Great Milton because of course they traditionally always had a lord to look up to and suddenly you had this French republican who took over. So imagine it was quite

Presenter24:32

But you turned it into a a country house hotel and a restaurant and so on. You set it up under a a business enterprise scheme, didn't you?

Raymond Blanc24:39

That is correct, yes, absolutely. Well, it was, I think, a very good thing for all of us because I we would have never been able to gather that amount of money. But it's not that.

Presenter24:47

But it's doing a little better than breaking even these days.

Raymond Blanc24:50

Oh yes, absolutely. Yeah, we're doing very well. It's quite nice to know that basically in England, in this part of our session, people are prepared to pay for excellence, which is fine.

Presenter24:52

Uh

Presenter24:58

However, a year ago disaster struck one morning when you got up and found that you couldn't even squeeze the toothpaste out of the tube. Can you tell me what happened that morning?

Raymond Blanc25:08

Well, I prefer not to talk about those things usually, but it was to me

Raymond Blanc25:14

a shock, an enormous shock, as everyone would imagine it. The shock was not only physical, but really the knowledge that that body who had served you so well, which you thought was completely indestructible,

Raymond Blanc25:29

That actually was, by the way, abused for so many years.

Raymond Blanc25:33

The skill lets you down completely and you suddenly realize

Raymond Blanc25:36

Your vulnerability, your mortality, your weaknesses.

Raymond Blanc25:43

It was to me ve very, very disturbing, very

Raymond Blanc25:47

It took me months actually of getting over it, really, to because luckily it was a Vaylight stroke, which was a wonderful warning for me. To me, it was equally a flashing light, orange, okay, and I had to reorganize my life.

Presenter25:58

Hmm.

Presenter26:01

I've lived in the past lane.

Raymond Blanc26:02

I've lived in a fast lane. I've lived in a fast lane for basically the last twenty years and very fast lane, with a Ferrari, really. And uh really I understood that I simply couldn't abuse myself like that. I had a life which was full of quite a number of pressures which I cannot explain here obviously, but uh it was quite a full of stress. And uh I really

Raymond Blanc26:26

I had to pace myself differently and organize myself differently. I could never delegate as well, because delegation means compromise. And actually I've learned that to credit people's intelligence. It's a great sign. And and believe me, often they do it as well or better, very often better than you can do it yourself. So you're a nice person these days? Well, I suppose I have learned yes, it was a great shock and I've learned something from it and uh my life has got still a very fast pace, but it is much more reasonable, much more acceptable to me and the people living with me, the people I love.

Presenter26:43

So you're a nicer person these days, huh?

Presenter26:58

Record number six.

Raymond Blanc26:59

Well the next record which I've chosen is called uh for is from Brahms and it's called Hungarian Dances. This piece of music actually mirrors very much the personality and the bounciness and the loveliness of my wife both in terms of brain and in terms of uh of uh energy. And uh it's rather a beautiful piece which is can be very intense, very romantic, can equally be very charming and happy and uh bouncy and uh really just um

Raymond Blanc27:27

Just a wonderful piece of music. I enjoyed turmoil.

Presenter27:30

And she's Hungarian.

Raymond Blanc27:31

She's Hungarian born, that's right, yes, she c came in England twenty years ago, like me.

Presenter28:33

Katya and Marielle Lebeck playing Brahm's Hungarian Dance No. One in G minor.

Presenter28:39

Why do you think you've taken so totally to England and Englishness? I mean, the your hotel and restaurant you describe is very English. It's chintz and log fires and herbaceous borders, and you know, you may have been critical about our attitudes to food, but you obviously like us enough to want to live among us. What's the attraction for you?

Raymond Blanc28:58

Well again, you don't fall in love with England. It's not you may fall in love with Ireland or Scotland, but England

Raymond Blanc29:05

You have to discover England, you've got to discover scratch over the surface and eventually you reach the heart of England, and the heart of England is rather beautiful. And I found even I've even found that the British actually are quite romantic. And that's maybe hidden quite deep inside, but it's there. Whereas I found the French extremely sentimental.

Presenter29:23

So scratch us, and there's quite a deal of passion there, is there really? But we just hide it, we button it up.

Raymond Blanc29:27

We just hide it.

Presenter29:32

Do you prefer us to the friend?

Raymond Blanc29:34

Well, to some French, definitely, yes, to most French, yes, definitely. I found the French difficult to deal with now because I found them so vain, so nationalistic, so proud, a little like little cockerels, you know. And as soon as you touch a little bit of their pride, they're they their their feathers go up, you know, and they start well, you've seen it in rugby lately and even in football, you know, so that's one of the so I found the French sometimes a bit difficult, a bit uh vain and uh hollow and uh very aware of the self, you know, of the image they give rather than what the deeper stuff inside.

Presenter30:08

Record number seven.

Raymond Blanc30:10

The record number seven is a

Raymond Blanc30:12

I got from Die Strait Tega Flod. It has a stunning mu music, absolutely stunning. I found it absolutely brilliant.

Speaker 230:21

The other travelers could walk down the track And they never went further, no, they never went back

Speaker 230:31

Then came the churches, then came the schools.

Speaker 230:35

Then came the lions, then came the rogues.

Speaker 230:39

The drains and the trucks with delay

Speaker 230:43

I'm a dirty old trap.

Speaker 230:46

What's the telegraph rule?

Presenter30:51

Dire Straits and Telegraph Road.

Presenter30:54

You've won accolades, Raymond Blanc, from all the leading publications for your hotel and for your restaurant, from Egon Rone, Gouet Millot, The Ackerman, The Times, the Courvoisier. But that third Michelin star eludes you. They won't they don't seem to want to award it to you. Why do you think that is?

Raymond Blanc31:13

Well, obviously I have to be self very critical towards my own performance and uh obviously a performance in a restaurant is every lunch and every dinner. And of course if you had some staying guests it's every night as well. So it's got to be perfect all the time. And uh I must say I I went through a pretty difficult and uh emotionally emotional period in my life, which uh created a few gaps and I suppose maybe it was at one stage a lack of consistency. If you ask me now, I I don't see a reason why, but

Raymond Blanc31:43

What I'm trying to do is to remove the idea of just working for a third star, orientating my whole life towards the aim of three star. I think it's I found that a useless pursuit.

Presenter31:53

So, although it doesn't obsess you at the same time, you must therefore think, My goodness, what else do I have to do to get this thing?

Raymond Blanc32:01

Well, funnily enough, one does know. And uh I think I thought I've done it, you know, and I thought I'm doing it.

Raymond Blanc32:07

And uh maybe this year it will happen. We'll see. But I don't want to turn all my energy towards that third star. I'm trying to be happy and make the most beautiful food I can, to give the most beautiful service that I possibly can and make the most the house the most elegant and the most nurses. That's all what I'm trying to do. And if I achieve that, I'm a very happy man.

Presenter32:25

Last record.

Raymond Blanc32:27

So the last record is a piece by Vivaldi and scored the four seasons, it would have to be.

Presenter32:32

And you want spring. Why why do you want it?

Raymond Blanc32:35

The season had an enormous influence on on my definitely on my working life and my life as a whole. And I chose the spraying because it's so much newness, it's so much such a happy piece. It's so you want to sing, you want to to be happy, and it's lovely.

Presenter33:50

The Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, conducted by Neville Mariner, playing concerto number one, Spring, from Vivaldi's Four Seasons. If you could only take one of those records, Raymond, which one would you choose?

Raymond Blanc34:02

Well, I would uh without hesitation take uh the Anglian dances because uh they mean so much to me. It was the happiest moment of my life and I just basically uh would be perfect for me. I could be happy about every night with a bit of imagination.

Presenter34:15

Memories of your wife.

Raymond Blanc34:17

Exactly, absolutely.

Presenter34:18

And your book, as well as the Bible and Shakespeare?

Raymond Blanc34:21

Well, the book is uh maybe controversial because it's a very tiny little book.

Raymond Blanc34:25

which I found which is not a great piece of literary work, but it's absolutely charming. It encapsulates basically universal love, kindness, and um really it's called Le Petit Prince, the Little Prince from the Saint Exipéry.

Presenter34:39

And your luxury.

Raymond Blanc34:41

while much luxury was not allowed.

Raymond Blanc34:43

The one I wanted, I was not allowed. I was even refused a penknife. My God, you're very tough. You know, I could have.

Presenter34:50

It's very practical.

Raymond Blanc34:51

Well, it should be something of spiritual value. Well basically uh uh in that case I will bring my good luck stone which is was given by Koti, my wife. And uh obviously it has served me extremely well lately, so I will take it with me.

Presenter34:52

It's supposed to be something of spiritual value if you definitely

Presenter35:06

Raymond Blanc, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Raymond Blanc35:10

Thank you very much.

Speaker 335:19

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.