“Totally inexperienced man opens up pub space around the corner from one of the most famous culinary families in England and ends up with three (Michelin) stars.”
So begins the story of artisan chef Heston Blumenthal.
“It seems like it’s all part of some cunning master plan,” he admits to The Sydney Morning Herald, “but it wasn’t. I just wanted to cook.”
Heston Blumenthal was born in 1966 in the London district of Kensington. A normal middle-class child, he spent his early years in a one-bedroom apartment with his parents and sister Alexis.
In the 70s, his father’s equipment business started to turn a profit, allowing the family to move out to the countryside. Blumenthal studied at various schools across west London with the hope of becoming an architect, though he never really had the grades to achieve this goal.
At the time, British cuisine was at an all-time low. “It was horrendous. It was a time when, as a nation, we excelled in art and music and acting and photography and fashion – all creative skills… all apart from cooking.” It was no different at the Blumenthal home. His mother cooked the standards of households at the time, and his father was always one to order a steak well-done.
It all changed when, during a holiday to France, the family visited three-Micheline-star restaurant L’Oustau de Baumanière. A 15 year-old Blumenthal was captivated by the meal; and it wasn’t just because of the food. “(It was a) whole multi-sensory experience: the sound of fountains and cicadas, the heady smell of lavender, the sight of the waiters carving lamb at the table.”
It piqued a curiosity in the dining experience for Blumenthal, who purchased his first cook book from a stand in the restaurant itself.
Before long, the book was one of many. Blumenthal graduated at age 18, and immediately began applying to work at several prominent restaurants in the area, confident that he was ready to take the next step in his career.
He was met with rejection for some time, until he convinced Raymond Blanc to take him on as an apprentice at Le Manoir. The job offered Blumenthal his first real experience in a kitchen, but it wasn’t what he wanted. After a week’s probation period, Blanc offered him a full-time position, but Blumenthal turned it down. He had decided that working his way up from the bottom wasn’t for him. Instead, he planned to open his own restaurant, and define his own style.
The following year, he read On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee. McGee’s unconventional, experimental approach to cooking inspired Blumenthal to “question everything”.
It couldn’t have come at a better time. Only a few years later, two scientists – one from Oxford, the other from France’s Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) – coined the phrase molecular gastronomy to define a new kind of food science that investigated the physical and chemical transformations that occur in the cooking and dining process. Underpinned by the value of social, artistic, and technical phenomena linked to the culinary experience, the concept incorporated the very elements that had driven Blumenthal to pursue a career as a chef in the first place.
Blumenthal worked various odd jobs (debt collector, salesman) during the day while experimenting with his craft at night. In 1989 he married “soul mate” Zanna, who supported him as he neared his goal of starting his own restaurant.
Finally, in 1995, Blumenthal had enough money to purchase an old pub in Berkshire. He re-opened it as The Fat Duck, styling it as a French bistro. At the time, there were only two employees working in the kitchen.
From the outset, Blumenthal’s experimental cuisine was featured on the menu. Between the lemon tarts and various steaks, diners could order the Triple Cooked Chips, which The Sunday Times went on to call “arguably his most influential culinary innovation”. In the years to come, these chips (a single batch of which takes three hours to prepare), were joined by revolutionary new dishes, including snail porridge, salmon poached in liquorice, and a simultaneously hot and cold iced tea.
His food was deemed molecular gastronomy, but Blumenthal rejected the term, calling it “elitist”. Instead, he chose to employ the phrase multi-sensory cooking.
Though initial reviews were complimentary, the first few years were a struggle. Blumenthal sold his house, car, and significant wine collection to keep The Fat Duck from going bankrupt. “I was determined that if I failed it wouldn’t be due to lack of effort.”
The first big break came for Blumenthal in 1999. Traditional methods for cooking green vegetables called for the water to stay on boil for the entire process, but The Fat Duck’s poor gas pressure meant that only a handful of vegetables could be cooked at any one time!
Forced to adapt, he began to experiment, and in doing so started to unravel some of the most fundamental rules of the kitchen.
He had started a revolution, the culmination of which saw the restaurant awarded its first Michelin star that same year. It wasn’t much, but it proved the he was on the right track.
Over the next two years, Blumenthal continued to innovate, and The Fat Duck received its second star around the same time that The Automobile Association named it Restaurant of the Year.
By 2002, Heston was becoming an international name on the culinary scene due to his TV show Kitchen Chemistry with Heston Blumenthal, which was supported in launch by a book of the same name.
The Fat Duck received a third star in 2004, making it only one of three restaurants in the United Kingdom to receive the accolade. Shortly after, it was named Restaurant’s second best restaurant in the world.
The Guardian‘s food critic, Matthew Fort, announced the following year: “Heston Blumenthal (is) the most original and remarkable chef this country has ever produced”.
Not content with his success, Blumenthal was still working to evolve his innovative, scientific, and socially exhilarating approach to the dining experience.
Over the next decade, he produced a range of cook books and television programs, most notably Heston’s Feasts, which saw him conceptualising thematic feasts for celebrity guests, and Heston’s Fantastical Food, on which he produced gigantic versions of traditional foods (ice cream, tea etc.) with a unique twist.
In 2007, Blumenthal added an item called Sound of the Sea to the Fat Duck menu that essentially defined what he was all about. Featuring distinct ingredients such as baby eels, dried kelp, and sea urchins displayed on a dish covered in edible sand, it is served on a glass-topped box filled with real sand, as well a set of headphones that play the sounds of the sea from an iPod hidden inside a conch shell set on the table. Blumenthal explained that the idea was one “of creating a world, of transporting the diner – through sound, through food, through an integrated appeal to the senses – to another place”.
And so he has. He’s even cooked for the Queen, on several occasions.
For Blumenthal, one of his most prestigious moments was when he received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Reading University in 2006, the first of many he would be given over the next seven years. “I had a lump in my throat the entire time,” he later recalled.
His degrees are joined by a variety of awards, including GQ’s Chef of the Year Awards in 2010/2011, and The Guild of Food Writers Awards in 2014 for his book Historic Heston.
Blumenthal even as his own personal coat of arms, as of June 2013.
Heston Blumenthal’s journey to success is one filled with experimentation, hard work, and an unequivocal desire to be different, to be better, whenever the chance arises. He is more than a masterful chef; he is a masterful artist, scientist, and business owner, worthy of our recognition and respect.