Commitment to a fine blend of quality, affordability and simplicity underpins Raymond Blanc’s burgeoning brasseries. Will Drew reports
Raymond Blanc is in the kitchen of the new Brasserie Blanc Opera Terrace preparing moules marinières and simultaneously training a startled commis in the art of French brasserie cooking. “Taste! Taste everything!” he implores the wide-eyed ingénue. “You are a chef!”
Of course, he’s not actually meant to be cooking; the 62-year-old chef/restaurateur/hotelier is at the Covent Garden brasserie for our interview and photo shoot. But while Blanc possesses myriad strengths that have seen him elevated to legendary status within the UK hospitality industry, sticking to the script has never been his forte.
A week or so later and Blanc is back ‘home’, at his luxury Oxfordshire hotel Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, co-hosting an exclusive five-course dinner with master sommelier Gerard Basset. His scheduled five-minute introduction turns into an impassioned and highly entertaining half-hour speech taking in his early career, plans for a new festival, his admiration for Basset, sustainable luxury and the importance of passing on knowledge not to mention the odd anecdote alluding to women and wine.
These vignettes aim simply to demonstrate that Blanc isn’t constrained by convention or shackled by the need to play by others’ rules. Instead he is a formidable creative force, fuelled by a com-bination of remarkable energy, natural showmanship and passionate commitment to his beliefs.
In the past, for all his successes, these characteristics may have also contributed to the odd problem notably a tricky divorce from first wife and business partner, Jenny, and the fall into administration of his original brasserie concept, Le Petit Blanc, back in 2003. But that only goes to make the recent success and current growth of the re-branded Brasserie Blanc of which the Opera Terrace site is the high-profile flagship all the more interesting. Significantly, the development and acceleration of the upper mid-market brasserie group has been guided by the astute hand of chief executive Mark Derry: the commercial yin to Blanc’s creative yang.
Affordable quality
At the beginning of 2012, the overall Brasserie Blanc business numbered eleven restaurants in total, all of which were outside London. By the close of the year, the group will have doubled in size following the opening of seven brasseries in the capital and four outside the M25. The rapid growth is largely the result of its acquisition of eight Chez Gerard sites from the now-defunct Paramount Restaurants for £9m in late 2011, funded by a private-equity injection from key investor Core Capital.
“We were fortunate in a number of things happening simultaneously,” says Derry. “Firstly, our main investor was impressed and wanted to put more money into the business, so we raised £15m of development capital. Almost at the same time, the opportunity for Chez Gerard came up. We were already minded to do more in London, where the market is more buoyant, and then we got lucky.”
That opportunity was sweetened by the inclusion of the Opera Terrace site an iconic glass-roofed restaurant space at one end of the old Covent Garden market building complete with a large terrace-balcony overlooking the eastern piazza. Aside from the 100-cover restaurant, it houses a self-contained cocktail bar specialising in absinthe served traditionally over sugar cubes.
The cocktail list was created by Blanc’s protégés from the last series of The Restaurant, JJ Goodman and James Hopkins of The London Cocktail Club, whose business is backed by the Frenchman. Downstairs in the piazza, the team’s new creperie provides eat-in or takeaway options.
“What we managed to do in the country, we will aim to do in London to become the local restaurant of the area,” says Blanc. “Most Brasserie Blanc guests [outside London] come from within two or three miles that’s a measure of the brand’s success and the trust that has been established.
“If you are good you provide strong service, consistency, simple rustic delicious food with good ethics and sustainability behind it whether you are in the City or outside, it doesn’t matter. It’s all about delivering what modern guests expect today: quality food at an affordable price.”
Maman’s influence
The menu at Brasserie Blanc could not be further from the highly refined gastronomic fare served at Le Manoir, but Blanc points out that his involvement on the high street is not merely window-dressing. The philosophy and culture of the business stem from him, but perhaps the most significant link, beyond marketing his name, comes in the form of executive chef Clive Fretwell.
Fretwell is a former head chef at Le Manoir, trained in the kitchen by the man himself. He has overseen the food offer at Brasserie Blanc for more than a decade, creating four seasonal menus a year inspired by the dishes Blanc learned from his mother, the revered Maman Blanc. Starters include the likes of pork rillettes (£7.20) and escargots in garlic butter (£8.20), while main courses take in grilled scallops (£18.90), lamb’s liver (£13.10) and beef Stroganoff (£12.80), as well as a range of steaks (from £18.40 to £27.30). Each head chef is also encouraged to flag up his or her region’s colours with local specials each week.
“The mistake people often make is to associate French food with complication,” says Blanc. “Of course it’s true when you touch haute cuisine, but we are not in that business here. We create recipes where there are never more than five steps and use a simple stock to support flavour rather than cover the food with a gelatinous mess. We are clear about what we are this is not a Petit Manoir.”
Derry is acutely aware that expansion can often lead to a dilution of food quality and is adamant that the structure in place at Brasserie Blanc will prevent this. “We see ourselves as a collection of restaurants, built around people, rather than a chain built around process,” he says. “With chains, there tends to be a feverish assault on the skill base, to de-skill in order to expand to 100 sites. In the bad old days, nobody recognised that producing good food was itself a skill and that you can’t do it, long-term, without good chefs and good managers.”
Solid foundations
Having ticked off openings in St Paul’s and Tower Hill in London plus Berkhamstead and Bath prior to the Covent Garden launch, this summer will see the group convert further Chez Gerard sites in Chancery Lane, Charlotte Street, Bishopsgate and the South Bank, as well as opening brand new restaurants in St Albans, Bath and Farnham.
Such rapid expansion creates its own challenges as Blanc knows from personal experience. The original Petit Blanc business, founded in 1996, ran into trouble after expanding too quickly. “I made the mistake of wanting to do too much and taking on some sites with leases that were not sensible. The restaurants were popular, but the costs were too high,” says Blanc. “The difference now is that we have a solid board made up of serious operators like Mark and Ian Glyn [chairman] who have a proven track record, but ethics too.”
Indeed, the brasserie business was rescued from administration in 2003 by the Loch Fyne Group, then being run by Derry and Glyn. The latter pair built the seafood concept from a fledgling business into a national chain with an emphasis on sustainability an approach that married with Blanc’s long-held stance on ethical sourcing.
Back at the Opera Terrace bar, Derry calm and considered in contrast to Blanc’s Gallic ebullience points out that the Paramount deal also involved the company picking up 200 new staff members, all of whom worked in the industry already. “We have retrained them, but we haven’t had to start from scratch, so that has helped. We are managing the openings to a level we can cope with however tempting it sometimes is to go as fast as you can.
“If you try to move too rapidly, it can have a direct impact on the longevity of the business. We also have to resist the temptation simply to do things less expensively. It’s a question of good management. We want to be here in 20 years.”
The company will also consider further expansion of its two-strong White Brasserie concept: essentially Brasserie Blanc in upmarket pubs. “We raised the finance with a view to doing more pubs as they’re working exceptionally well, but the Chez Gerard deal came up,” says Derry. “We still foresee strong growth there, though.”
A sense of collective responsibility is reflected in the fact that 60 employees directors, chefs, managers and the like are significant shareholders in the business. This helps create a motivational, inclusive culture, but it also means that they might realise some financial value in the long-term. “The idea is not for a couple of guys to make a lot of money, but to involve our people in the values of the business and for them to get some proper reward for their work,” adds Derry.
But surely Blanc celebrity, TV personality, cookbook author, chef-patron of a two-star Michelin restaurant doesn’t need the cash so much. So what’s his motivation? “I love people and I love this business. I still find it exciting. It’s the greatest industry because you touch everything: finance, art, design, people, food, conversation every sphere of life is in restaurants,” he says.
While he is no longer involved in the Maison Blanc chain of bakery-cafés, he still juggles numerous other projects from launching a cultural festival to advising the government on sustainability issues; from mentoring JJ and James to setting up a specialist rare-breeds farm. He is quick to credit those around him (see Napoleon’s generals panel): Derry and John Lederer at Brasserie Blanc; Gary Jones, Philip Newman-Hall and others at Le Manoir. But Blanc remains a constantly whirring, multi-tasking madcap machine.
And, of course, he’s still got time to teach young chefs how to prepare a decent bowl of mussels.
Napoleon’s generals: five Englishmen behind one French emperor
“A field marshal needs solid generals around him, ” says Raymond Blanc. “No one can be good at everything, so you have to surround yourself with good people, especially in your fields of weakness. It’s important to know your own skill sets. When you’ve eaten a few humble pies like me, you learn from those experience: you look back, work out what you did wrong and go again.”
Mark Derry
chief executive, Brasserie Bar Co
The financial brains behind Brasserie Blanc made his name building Loch Fyne into a national chain with a sustainable ethos before selling it on to Greene King for £70m. His role is to raise the finance, liaise with investors, oversee property and development opportunities and to “make sure we don’t fall over as we charge forward”.
Philip Newman-Hall
general manager, Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons
It’s no fluke that Blanc’s luxury country hotel remains not only one of the finest, but also the most enduringly popular, in the entire country. Newman-Hall was lured back to the Oxfordshire destination in 2009 by Blanc after a five-year hiatus and has raised its already sky-high standards further with meticulous attention to detail, a focus on staff training and an unmatched guest service culture.
John Lederer
managing director, Brasserie Blanc and White Brasserie
This long-time Blanc general runs the Brasserie Blanc business on a day to day basis, and recently developed its sister operation The White Brasserie Company. Born in France, Lederer was also one of Raymond’s on-screen advisors for the hugely successful BBC TV show The Restaurant.
Clive Fretwell
executive chef, Brasserie Blanc
A well-respected chef, Fretwell has worked with Blanc for nearly a quarter of a century, initially at Le Manoir, where he rose to become head chef, and then at Le Petit Blanc. He has been in charge of the food at Brasserie Blanc for more than 10 years and is currently personally training up the kitchen staff at the new Opera Terrace flagship.
Gary Jones
executive head chef, Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons
Jones has been running the kitchen at Blanc’s two-star restaurant at Le Manoir since 1999, following a stint there as sous chef earlier in his career. The unassuming Merseyside-born chef presides over a brigade of 45, turning out brilliantly accurate fine dining meals in almost banquet-like volumes while at the same time maintaining gastronomic flair.
