All professions have their own delusions of grandeur — in journalism an inflated ego is more of a qualification than any degree — but food is a funny old game. There’s “restaurant famous” (people at industry parties are scared to talk to you) and “actually famous” (someone in Slough has heard of you).
Which is to say, there are only a handful of truly well-known restaurants across the UK, if we take Pizza Express and the like out of the game. Who’d get in? Perhaps Le Gavroche; the Ivy; the Waterside Inn; the Fat Duck; “that place in Padstein” (a smug, knowing wink may come with this mention); “what’s the fancy Ramsay one?”. Probably Gleneagles, definitely The Ritz. Old timers, basically — though L’Enclume might just slip in too. I think you’re getting the point.
Which serves as a reminder of how unusual Le Manoir is. It somewhere with a reputation not just here but internationally too — an achievement heightened by knowing its chef-patron Raymond Blanc being entirely self-taught — and it’s the place that probably comes up the most often during the oh-so-what-do-you-do? chat at parties (them, brightly: “Is Le Manoir as good as they say?” Past me, glumly: “I, er, I’ve never been.”)
The story of it is much-mythologised. The shorthand is that Blanc was cooking in Oxford in the early Eighties in a tiny bistro (“where the oven door didn’t shut properly,” we’re told, unconvincingly). He was on the pull for somewhere new and found Le Manoir’s grand manor house advertised in a magazine. It is a building so beautiful, such a perfect countryside ideal, that it seems unreal, as though it were merely imagined. After mistaking fading aristo Lady Cromwell for the cleaner, Blanc did a deal in ‘84 — the rumour is it was a £1-and-debt job — to take it over. A year in, Michelin gave the place two stars, which have been retained ever since. This in itself is astonishing: in the UK, only Gavroche and the Waterside Inn have had their stars so long; internationally, only a small handful of spots in France (the best bet here is three).
It is not far from London — under an hour from Marylebone, cab from Haddenham and Thame station included — but, out in the Oxfordshire countryside, feels of another time, another country. It is somewhere where the sense of occasion is as obvious and warming as sunlight; not just through reputation but there the moment the grand gates swing into view, heightened on the early hellos, the offering of Champagne or local English fizz Hundred Hills, the delicate, smiling efficiency that marks everything. Though Manoir is evidently doable as a day trip, its effect — which is a dazzling one — is best enjoyed with a stay. A stay undertaken on the understanding that deep pockets are a necessity. But we’ll get to that.
To the food. Le Manoir’s thing is its organic, sustainable ethos — words recited endlessly, relentlessly in the restaurant game, each repetition watering down both the meaning and impact. Here, at least, there is evidence found on a proof-offering garden stroll. “Do we have to?” says my pal. And, granted, who wants a garden tour, really? But the walk is somehow beyond charming, the gardens a beautiful turn of secrets, each corner different to the others. Here are the herbs, fruits and vegetables that make it into the kitchens. Sculptures watch over them, themselves telling stories of the restaurant. One, we’re told, was commissioned with so much input from Blanc that the artist decided to make it look like the great chef. It is, of course, the scarecrow. For those who think a tour sounds too much like a traipse, the Green Star from Michelin may be an alternate convincer.
Those ingredients — and others that must come from elsewhere — make it into a kitchen now headed by Luke Selby and his brothers Nathaniel and Theo; the trio come from Evelyn’s Table, the Soho 12-seater where they picked up a star. For Luke, 32, it is a return; he first worked there in 2009, having previously met Blanc as a 14-year-old. But the placement is more significant than that: when Luke took over as executive chef last November, he was following Gary Jones, who’d been at Manoir for two decades. It is, then, an uncommon change. You sense consistency is crucial here.
A six-course lunch is offered, or a seven-course supper; given the garden, the smart money chooses the vegetarian choice. But, but… it has no lamb or pigeon, and, curiously, no morels. And so it is hard to be the smart money; we settle for idiocy. It is not so hard to come to terms with, especially after a softening Martini in the comfort of the lounge. This beginning — drinks first being their suggestion — is indicative of a laid-back, good-time kind of approach. No-one is rushed; tables are not turned.
Is it strange the dining room is in the conservatory, not in the main house? Yes. But the food served there is mostly what could be called gastronomy with a gossamer touch; it is subtle, intricate, precise and artful. It is in the pink of a spring sunset in the cured trout, made floral with bergamot and piquant with pickled radish, and the mackerel where the heat of horseradish is in a firefight with dill and green apple. It is in a morel that sits as an island, all earth and adventure, in a foaming lake of Gewürztraminer, where white asparagus swims, the whole thing in the shade of a crisped-bread fan. The pigeon goes the opposite way: great dollops of prune ketchup, to slather over the salt-pricked skin; comfort is on the cards with this dish, ditto the baba with rhubarb. But menus change often; nightly, if you stay and dine more than one evening in a row. No, really: they will make a fresh tasting menu for every night a guest is in, though à la carte options are offered on the account that, well, eating a tasting menu every evening is something only few have the fearlessness to attempt.
What won’t change is the service; attentive but done with an easiness that is pervasive in the best sense, in a way that calms. It is there not just with one particularly good waiter or waitress but in the team entirely; clearly, it is something taught. I suspect the measures of wine are a taught thing too; not the accountant-pleasing 125ml measures advertised but the diner-pleasing pours that might look rude were you to do it yourself. My pal and I are pros but in the morning, over breakfast, I notice two chaps giggle guiltily when the waiter wonders how the heads are. “Ah, but that is what we like here,” he says, smiling.
The rooms have been drawn up to be entirely individual, so take to the website to work out where you might fancy. I was in an old stable with vaulted ceilings and a walk-in wardrobe bigger than my flat’s bathroom. It was a room that astonished, in part thanks to the hallway leading to it, the ceiling a beautiful mess of vines. But where designs differ, each does come with a bottle of vintage Champagne (those not fancying a bottle before supper are encouraged to take it away, as we did), a small bottle of Madeira, this being an ideal digestif and Blanc’s favourite drink, as well as cake, and fruit and vegetables from the garden.
I mention it all because price, when it is this much, must be a consideration. A meal on its own is £230 a head; a room for two with breakfast and dinner gets going at about £1200 a night. Things cost what they do; only you know what you fancy skimming from the slush fund. It is either the sort of money that suggests a honeymoon night, or the kind of money that says “well, it was a good month, after all.” We all do differently.
Some of the price is offset by everything that’s included. But it’s why, despite it being so close to London, that lunch feels less attractive than supper; Le Manoir is its food, yes, but it’s also in the splendour of what’s offered. It is in driving through the gates, wandering the grounds, in spending hours soaking in the bath and thinking, well, I regret a lot in life but I still made it here. In its very best moments, Le Manoir conjures a feeling of enormous gratitude for just being around to experience it. Few places do that. Perhaps that’s why so few other places are so famous.
