Your education, your influences, etc.

[Bux]

You started your restaurant career in your father's "Le Grandgousier" restaurant in Brighton. Was it, as the name suggests, a French restaurant? It appears that your career has been spent learning and then practicing your trade in the UK, with the brief exception of Chez Panisse which is not a French restaurant. How many of the restaurants, particularly the ones you found most defining in your career, served French food? I ask in all naivety as I'm on the other side of the pond, but I also ask with an eye toward your comments in response to a question about traditional French food. I get the sense that in spite of the fact that UK ingredients and skills today are top notch, and that contemporary diners in London are knowledgeable and discriminating, the food you cook and that of much of the best restaurants in London and the rest of the UK, is based on the traditions imported by Careme, Escoffier and others from France. One review notes that "pate de foie de volaille; salade Lyonnaise; marmite Dieppoise; tete de veau; sauce ravigote" and the like are typical offerings at Racine. (By the way, could you post a typical menu here, or a link too one online?) I'm curious. Did you ever consider working or studying in France?

About Chez Panisse, did your experience there have any discerable effect on your cooking? What did you think about food in Calfornia in 1987? I would have advised you too to France, but in retrospect I think you may have made the much wiser choice. Care to comment?

[tripe]

I never really thought of working in France . When I started my apprenticeship with Simon Hopkinson there seemd no need to go elsewhere as his quest for perfection was all consuming. Teaming this up with being introduced to the works of Richard Olney by SH I felt that I was learning about all of France and not just the one region one would be working in. Holidays anda substantial amount of eating introduced meb to the ingredients that I could not get in the UK and good traing made me understand how one achieved the finished dish.

My visit to Chez Panisse was thje briefest but revelatory. Access to local farms, markets and other small producers was such an important part of Chez Panisse and Alice Waters set this very much as one of the most important principles tyhat we should be reminded of, long before it made it to the East Coast let alone English cities

[Andy Lynes]

Bux - you can find a recent menu from Racine here.