A balancing act with Heston Blumenthal at his home in Provence
Excerpts and outtakes from the pages of Esquire
When Esquire arrived in rural Provence in October, to profile Heston Blumenthal, perhaps Britain’s least predictable chef (see pages 164– 177), we found him in fine fettle except for one inconvenient injury. Blumenthal’s right wrist was strapped up, the legacy of a cycling accident in the summer that had seen him take a boneshattering tumble from his state of the art electric mountain bike. He had been pedalling it in the local mountain range, Les Alpilles, and had come a cropper when applying too much pressure to the front brake.
It turned out Blumenthal wasn’t the only celebrity cook who’d done himself a mischief on this infernal machine. Malheureusement, Raymond Blanc, another recent visitor to the Blumenthal residence in the village of Eygalières, had a nasty fall just a few feet from where the above photograph was taken. He, too, had apparently squeezed too hard on the deathtrap left-hand brake. Happily, the 70-year-old chef patron of Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons lived to tell the tale, or at least to hear Blumenthal tell it for him, with much guffawing and delighted clapping of hands at the image of the elderly Frenchman flying past the French windows. (Are they called French windows in France? Possibly not.)
As a result of all this, we forgive Esquire editor-in-chief Alex Bilmes, pictured above with Blumenthal, for his safety-first approach when his turn came to steer the thing over the hard soil of the chef’s back garden. Not, by any description, an experienced mountain-biker, certainly not an elegant rouleur, as you may be able to tell from his posture, Bilmes nevertheless managed to make it around in one piece. No land speed records were broken, but neither were any limbs. Simon Emmett was on hand, as he was throughout the visit, to capture the glorious moment on film. No doubt endorsement deals from major cycling brands will be forthcoming.
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