My restaurant’s like a hospital, moans Blanc
Chef fumes over ‘fashionable’ food intolerances
AS a Michelin- starred chef he is used to pandering to the needs of his customers.
But Raymond Blanc has said that so many of them now have food intolerances, his kitchen is starting to resemble a hospital.
The 70-year- old Frenchman, who runs Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons hotel- restaurant in Oxfordshire, has said that a food intolerance has become ‘almost like a fashion item’.
This leads to instructions such as ‘no milk, no flour, no lemon’ on his board in the kitchen when the restaurant takes orders, he added.
Blanc said intolerances are a result of eating food that has been intensively farmed and containing chemicals.
He said British consumers have for too long not cared about how their food is produced but are now becoming aware of the effects.
‘We have been self- destructing, but we’re starting to appreciate the cost,’ he told Country Life magazine.
‘We’re thinking about those chemicals and putting them together with our ill health. You should see the board in my kitchen when we take orders – no milk, no flour, no lemon – it’s more like a hospital.
‘A food intolerance has become almost like a fashion item, but these are true allergies, provoked by what we eat and the environment in which we live.’
He added: ‘Our environment and health are becoming a priority again, as the consumer becomes more and more aware. Ignorance is slowly being replaced by knowledge and knowledge is empowering.’
Blanc also called for Britain, which imports 70 per cent of what we eat from other countries, to produce more of its own food.
‘By growing and creating what we need here, you prevent all that pollution and its effects,’ the chef said.
Blanc came to England in 1972 and founded his two- starred Michelin restaurant in 1983.
He also warned that Britain’s foodie revival is being threatened by the popularity of online delivery firms.
‘There are still threats to our gastronomic renaissance,’ Blanc said.
‘Take the rise of delivery services such as Deliveroo – it’s food without any effort whatsoever.
‘We’re alien to cooking now, because we live busy lives and even a simple omelette requires an element of effort. You have to go out and buy the eggs, crack them, mix them, season them and fry them in a pan.
‘There’s a degree of apprehension and fear at whether we can make the perfect omelette, because we don’t cook enough and have lost our confidence.
‘Then afterwards, you have to clean everything up.’
He does believe, however, that lockdown may have opened people’s eyes to home cooking.
‘I think coronavirus will help a lot long term because people have reconnected with growing and cooking for themselves,’ he said. ‘I hope it will last.’