Heston Blumenthal

Heston Marc Blumenthal (born 27 May 1966) is an English celebrity chef, TV personality and food writer.

Blumenthal is regarded as a pioneer of multi-sensory cooking, food pairing and Flavour encapsulation.

He came to public attention with unusual recipes, such as bacon-and-egg ice cream and snail porridge.

His recipes for triple-cooked chips and soft-centred Scotch eggs have been widely imitated.

He has advocated a scientific approach to cooking, for which he has been awarded honorary degrees from the universities of Reading, Bristol and London and made an honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Heston Marc Blumenthal was born in Shepherd's Bush, London, on 27 May 1966, to a Jewish father born in Southern Rhodesia and an English mother who converted to Judaism.

His surname comes from a great-grandfather from Latvia and means 'flowered valley' (or 'bloom-dale'), in German.

Blumenthal was raised in Paddington, and attended Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith; St John's Church of England School in Lacey Green, Buckinghamshire; and John Hampden Grammar School, High Wycombe.

His interest in cooking began at the age of sixteen on a family holiday to Provence, France, when he was taken to the 3-Michelin-starred restaurant L'Oustau de Baumanière.

He was inspired by the quality of the food and "the 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".

When he learned to cook, he was influenced by the cookbook series Les recettes originales, with French chefs such as Alain Chapel.

When he left school at eighteen, Blumenthal began an apprenticeship at Raymond Blanc's Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons but left after a week's probation.

Over the next ten years he worked in a "relatively undemanding series of jobs – credit controller, repo man" during the day, teaching himself the French classical repertoire in the evenings.

A pivotal moment came when reading On Food and Cooking: the Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee in the mid-1980s.

This challenged kitchen practices such as searing meat to seal in the juices, and it encouraged Heston to "adopt a totally different attitude towards cuisine that at its most basic boiled down to: question everything".

In 1995, Blumenthal bought a run-down pub in Bray, Berkshire called the Ringers and re-opened it as the Fat Duck.

It quickly gained the attention of food critics; Matthew Fort and Fay Maschler praised the cooking.

Blumenthal described the original restaurant as a "bistro".

In 2002, Heston made a series of six half-hour television programmes, Kitchen Chemistry with Heston Blumenthal, which was transmitted on Discovery Science along with a book Kitchen Chemistry, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Blumenthal acquired the Hind's Head, also in Bray, in 2004.

During 2004–07, he presented two BBC series called Heston Blumenthal: In Search of Perfection and Heston Blumenthal: Further Adventures In Search of Perfection.

Blumenthal moved from the BBC to Channel 4 in March 2008, joining the channel's group of celebrity chefs which already included Jamie Oliver, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Gordon Ramsay.

In January 2009 a three-part series of television programmes on Channel 4 covered his efforts to revamp the menu at a Little Chef motorway restaurant on the A303 road at Popham.

In March 2009 Blumenthal began a short series of programmes, called Heston's Feasts, showing themed dinner banquets.

Blumenthal's public profile has been increased by a number of television series, most notably for Channel 4, as well as a product range for the Waitrose supermarket chain introduced in 2010.

He is the proprietor of the Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, a three-Michelin-star restaurant which is widely regarded as one of the best in the world.

Blumenthal also owns Dinner, a two-Michelin-star restaurant in London, and a pub in Bray, the Hind's Head, with one Michelin star.

A second series of this was commissioned and began in 2010.

In 2011, it was named the Michelin Pub Guide's "Pub of the Year".

In January 2011, Blumenthal opened his first restaurant outside Bray, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, at the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, London.

Historians helped to develop the restaurant's dishes from historic British recipes.

From 22 February 2011, Channel 4 began airing Heston's Mission Impossible, in which Heston targets lacklustre food served in various industries and aims to upgrade the food to meals that people enjoy to eat.

Dinner was awarded its first Michelin star in 2012.

It was voted the 7th best restaurant in the world in 2013.

The Little Chef group extended Blumenthal's menu to 12 branches but, in 2013, removed his dishes from all restaurants.

It received a second Michelin Star in the 2014 Michelin Guide.

In June 2014, Blumenthal announced a new restaurant, the Perfectionists' Cafe, in Heathrow Airport.

The building was a 15th-century tavern; it now serves traditional seasonal cuisine and historic British dishes.

In 2015, the Fat Duck was temporarily relocated to Melbourne, Australia, while the Bray restaurant was refurbished.

Upon reaching the end of its temporary opening, the restaurant became a permanent Melbourne-based Dinner by Heston Blumenthal although not owned by him.