Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Maitre Chef de Cuisine at the Ritz Hotel in London, and the first British chef to hold such a post in a premier London hotel.
On the island
Eight records
So Limbo, I'm uh a Yorkshireman, I love cricket, and this would remind me of Headingley uh Test Ground.
Because I think a lot of uh the lyrics are things that uh I would like to have written.
It reminds me very much of uh the little house that we have in Sussex.
My my well, my wife uh plays our piano at home and she plays this actually. ... And this would give me uh tremendous memories of Jens piano playing.
North Country FantasyFavourite
being obviously a Yorkshireman. I always remember as a child my father taking me to Roundley Park in Leeds and listening to a brass band.
In conversation
Presenter asks
3:02Why did you want to be a cook? How did that come about?
Well, when I was a lad, my mother taught us all at a very early age how to make Victoria sponges. Meat and potato pie. ... We uh had to help in the house. ... I wanted to be a cook since I was about uh fourteen, really.
Presenter asks
3:38What did you do about [your ambition to cook]?
I wrote to the Queen's Hotel in Leeds ... and I wrote for a job and uh I was offered a position as um an apprentice cook. And I started on the 31st of July 1961.
Presenter asks
14:29Did you have to audition [for the Ritz]? Did they ask you to come in and use their kitchen and show them what you could do?
He said to me on my first interview, he said, Would I be prepared to come and cook for the um directors? which I said no ... I said, Well, um, I haven't got anything to prove. I said, um if you want to taste my cooking. You'd better come down to Gravetown and pay for it.
The keepsakes
The book
Louis Saulnier
The book that I would really take would be the book that uh helped make me the cook that I am.
Presenter asks
But the Ritz cuisine when you came in was still French [and you changed it]?
Yes, it was a very large uh menu, uh written in French ... and then um the boss and I, mister Duffle, got our heads together ... and decided that um we'd moved away from uh dishes from the repertoire de la cuisine. ... And so we decided to ... write the menu in English and create our own dishes.
Presenter asks
29:08Have your parents come down from Leeds to visit you at the Ritz and taste your cooking?
Yes, actually, they visited me very recently. ... My mum dad never seen me and my chef's wise. ... They had uh lunch in my office. And I found out afterwards that because mum and dad had never really been to a ... a posh hotel and um I found out afterwards that she was so nervous, she couldn't sleep the night before.
“I actually had white baker's trousers and I got a little bit of stick in my first few weeks.”
“I lost thirty-one chefs in my first year at the race. And replace them with uh men who felt the same way.”
“Yes, there's only one person allowed to uh raise the voice in the race kitchen, and that's Michael Quinn. The rest uh keep in line.”