While you are reading this what is Heston Blumenthal up to? Asked to name the
one thing he absolutely has to do at the weekend, Britain's most inventive
chef is a bit stumped. There's a long pause, an “Oh God” and eventually an
“Um, I have a really big gym session ... but that sounds really dull.”
Another pause. “I tell you what. My wife bought me chickens two years ago
for my birthday. One thing we try to do on Saturday or Sunday is have
breakfast with eggs from the chickens. A pure fried egg. Couple of drops of
vinegar on it.”
Frying eggs sounds like a bit of a busman's holiday for the creator of bacon
and egg ice-cream, but at least this paints a picture of a relaxed family
scene. Then he spoils it by adding: “We forget most weekends.” Talking to
Blumenthal, 42, about how he kicks back and relaxes is not easy. Not because
he is hard to talk to. Far from it. He is a very engaging and forthcoming
fellow. It's just that while he may be the master of ultra-slow cooking, he
doesn't exactly relax the pace in the rest of his life.
The morning we meet follows a night out for Blumenthal with friends at the
London restaurant Hakkasan. “I only go out four or five times a year.” Such
is the price of earning, and striving to maintain, three Michelin stars and
a reputation as one of the world's best chefs. The Fat Duck, the restaurant
in Bray where he practises his culinary alchemy, was voted best in the world
in 2005.
All that snail porridge has meant sacrificing family life. If he had taken
nights off or done the usual round of dad stuff at weekends he would not
have accomplished what he has professionally. “I certainly couldn't have
achieved this if I had done that. Not at all.”
He has been with Zanna, his wife, for 22 years and they have three children
(Jack 16, Jess, 13, and Joy, 11). Does he regret missing so much of their
childhoods? “I do, I do. My son is 16 now so is at that stage where he would
rather be with his mates. I admit I missed some time. I am lucky because my
kids like seeing me, which is great, so I managed to get through it.” His
eldest has even been doing some shifts in the kitchen at Blumenthal's pub in
Bray.
“My wife has been the cause of the success of the restaurant. Some chefs like
to think we are the fourth emergency service but we are just cooking. It's a
very selfish thing we do. She supported all of that. If she hadn't been that
way, or had given me pressure about time at work - that sort of thing - it
wouldn't have happened.”
Does she never lose it with him? “Occasionally, but more about my general
behaviour at home. I put so much into work I'm pretty useless at home. My
wife does everything. She has been amazing. I literally never forget
anything at work. At home ... I lost my keys this morning. I don't know how
many credit cards I've lost. I do that thing: I'm missing my socks and stand
in middle of room holding them. If I had to fend for myself it would
probably be different.”
Blumenthal had worked as a photocopier salesman, a debt collector and an
accountant before he decided to move in with his parents and realise his
dream of opening a restaurant. “My wife didn't marry a chef and we had two
kids when we opened a restaurant, so she's gone from having a husband and
father home in the evening to, in the first few years, [someone who]
couldn't leave the restaurant at all.” Zanna made him overcome
angermanagement issues. One day when they were living with his parents two
men came to the door and threatened his father over a dispute about his
grandmother's house. “This guy is shouting through the door saying, I'm
going to break your kneecaps', and my son started started crying and I was,
I'm not having this'. So I walked out the room and unlocked the cupboard.
Old Beretta with half-a-dozen cartridges. I just walked back to the door and
pulled the trigger. I completely lost it. That was scary - it wasn't an
adrenalin rush. Everything slowed down. My wife pulled me back, the gun went
up.”
He pursued the men by car. With the gun? “No.” Well, that's something. “I had
a cleaver.” Somehow this story ended up with the men sorting out their
differences over a cup of tea at his dad's house but Zanna decided that it
was time he sought help. He had therapy and she suggested cranial
osteopathy. Looking at his shaved pate and cheeky smile I blurt out: “Like
they do with babies”.
“That's exactly why my wife thought of it. Babies cry a lot and it works by
relaxing them. It relaxed me and it was a gradual process of controlling the
anger. I had a bad temper on me. Now I haven't raised my voice in eight
years.” He swears so rarely that when he said “f*** 'im” during the recent
Big Chef Takes on Little Chef Channel 4 TV series his kids thought it
hilarious. His assistant, Monica, a Glaswegian, chips in that because he
never swears her family suspected that her bad influence had rubbed off on
him.
Although Willy Wonka's world of test-tubes and potions captured his
imagination as a child (he has since become friends with Roald Dahl's widow,
Felicity) he was not purely interested in the science of food for its own
sake. “The biggest drive for me was to control my temper. That's where the
science elements of my cooking come into play. When chefs shout because
someone's overcooked something or dropped something they've lost control.
The [scientific] processes are trying to take away chance from the
equation.” He gives as an example the way that he experimented to deduce at
exactly what temperature a lemon tart is ready.
An area of his life where he battles to maintain control is his size and his
health. These days if he is not filming he will pop in and out of the
kitchen at The Fat Duck during service but he is really just at the very top
of the quality control tree. His 44 chefs (that's one for each cover) do the
cooking. He spends most of his time in the development kitchen. That means
sampling a lot of food. “I didn't have a real meal yesterday but I ate 14
pieces of braised pork belly, six pieces of an olive shortbread, four
different ice-creams. We blind taste everything. And what I don't want to do
is lose the enjoyment of food.” The only way to stay in shape is five or six
hard work-outs a week and games of racquetball. “And it gets worse as you
get older.” He used to do kick-boxing. “I loved it but I'd be lucky if I
could kick a dwarf in the nuts right now. Not the most agile person.”
He asks me about my metabolism and explains how tests have shown that he is
“unbelievably efficient at burning fat and unbelievably inefficient at
burning carbs. And I really love having a glass of red wine when I get home
from work, which is just a killer. Also if you get sleep deprived you can
get used to four hours of sleep a night, your body craves carbohydrates more
so you get a piece of bread and stick something in it. That is the worst.” A
shadow briefly crosses his face. “I just ordered a tuna sandwich.”
Blumenthal regards himself as Jewish, but agnostic, and says: “We celebrate
Christmas”. The lunch he had at a three-Michelin-star restaurant in Provence
with his parents as a teenager is described almost like a religious
experience. He fell instantly in love with cooking and the idea of being a
chef. He taught himself to cook, fired by a determination to “recreate that
feeling I had when I was 15 or 16, that sense of wonderment. I had grown up
without any gastronomic experience. So if I had eaten lobster and sat in
these sorts of restaurants before it would not have had the impact. People
ask why I have gone down this whole multi-sensory route. My memory of that
restaurant in Provence is as much about things around me as on my plate. I
can remember what I ate - but it was the atmosphere, the noises, the smell
of the lavender.”
If he could have only one sense it would be smell: “Smell is the biggest
memory trigger of all the senses.” He craves more time to smell the roses
but when I ask what he would do with it he talks about how he would think up
new ideas for the business. He has been busy filming Feast, a series in
which he creates dishes inspired by historical periods. In the first
programme, Victorians, he dreams up an ingenious “drink-me” potion that
changes flavour as it is drunk, and an edible garden. Blackbirds baked in a
pie and an ejaculating cake with a Roman theme are to follow. Some dishes
may make it on to the Fat Duck menu.
“The danger is becoming risk-averse. The pressure is, What's he going to do
next?' But at the same time you can't force creativity.” An update on Big
Chef Takes On Little Chef, to find out if the restaurant chain is going to
expand the experiment beyond the one restaurant Blumenthal transformed, will
be filmed next month. He is hopeful.
“Apparently they've had Eric Clapton and Suzi Quatro queueing for tables. Some
bloke rang and said, Where are you in relation to Popham airfield? I'm
flying in'. It's bizarre.” There have been rumours of a London restaurant
venture. “Nothing definite as yet so I can't say any more.” Intriguing. He
sounds busier than ever but, he says: “I do now spend more time with the
family than I ever have done. What we have started doing is booking time in
the diary to do things. Went and saw Cirque du Soleil a couple of weeks ago
and I discovered skiing two years ago and it was brilliant. For the first
time I took my mind off work and the kids loved it.” He goes to see Arsenal
a few times a season.
Apart from the fried eggs he leaves the cooking at home to Zanna. The only
criticism he makes is of the way she chops. “That really scares me. You're
going to take the end of your fingers off. Pull your fingers in.” My wife
will probably say I do interfere but I think I'm pretty good.”
He drives a BMW M5. “Amazing but not too flash.” He splurges on clothes but
then wears them until they are threadbare. He enjoys wine. “I'd quite
happily spend a hundred quid on a bottle of wine for Sunday lunch. Otherwise
my biggest indulgence is work.”
The most recent “shiny object” he had to have was a bottle that can pour still
and sparkling water by turns. He has been testing a prototype.
He wants us to “look at food as theatre and entertainment of which a
by-product is not being hungry”. There doesn't seem to be much likelihood of
him taking a regular seat in the audience in the foreseeable future. He says
wistfully: “I would like to eat out a lot more.”
Perfect weekend:
Couch potato or gym rat?
Gym rat.
Beer or wine? Wine.
Jeans or tracksuit bottoms? Jeans
Candle-lit dinner or takeaway? Takeaway: local Indian and DVD.
Converse or brogues? Brogues but I don't wear either
Theatre or cinema? In the past year I haven't been to the cinema but I
saw Cirque du Soleil.
Book or TV? TV because the reading I do is all work reading.
Cornwall or Caribbean? Cornwall. I've been to the Caribbean once and
Cornwall half-a-dozen times. My wife would go and live in Cornwall if we
could.
Board game or computer? I'm not a game person but the Wii completely
changed things because you're active. I like charades.
I couldn't get through the weekend without ... Fried eggs from my
chickens.
