Heston Blumenthal told Soccer AM of his pride at getting The Little Chef into the Good Food Guide...
Blumenthal pulls off the impossible
Heston Blumenthal was officially named Britain's Best Chef this week but he admitted on
Soccer AM he is prouder of the fact he has got The Little Chef into the Good Food Guide.
Blumenthal turned up to the
Sky Sports studios boasting playing cards made out of white chocolate and raspberry compote, a delicacy he serves at his award-winning Fat Duck restaurant, voted the best restaurant in England.
However, it is his renovated Little Chef experiment that is gaining more headlines, after Blumenthal became the first chef to get a roadside eatery into the Good Food Guide.
"There's only 1,300 restaurants that make it into the Which Good Food Guide, so it's literally only the top two-and-a-half percent of restaurants in the country that makes it in," he told
Soccer AM.
"The Good Food Guide has been going for 60-odd years and this is the first time ever that a roadside restaurant has made it in. It's the only one.
"I never thought that would happen.
"We used to get people coming in and complaining that the only paper on offer was a Daily Star, people would say 'where's the Guardian?'
"Now we've got people phoning up to make reservations and flying in by helicopter!"
New book
Blumenthal has just released his new book, "The Fat Duck Cookbook", but after recalling a story of a DIY Heston Blumenthal wannabe from Germany (who blew his own hands off), he warned that his book will not turn the country into gourmet chefs.
"The new book's basically cheaper and smaller than the first! The other one was called "The Big Fat Duck Cookbook". This one is called "The Fat Duck Cookbook".
"It's not a home cookbook. The recipes in there are exactly how we cook at The Fat Duck down to the very milligram.
"There's elements to the dishes you could definitely do, and there are lists of kitchen myths. For example, everyone says 'never wash mushrooms'. It's nonsense.
"It was a fantastic result to be named number one restaurant, and particularly pleasing after we had to shut down earlier in the year due to the Norovirus.
"Everybody was reporting we were giving people food poisoning, but the symptoms of Norovirus are the same as food poisoning and apparently the virus spread to half a million people in a couple of months - including our restaurant.
"We shut the restaurant and then the headlines made national news, with people suggesting it's down to modern cooking and so on."
The Arsenal
When he downs his spatula, Blumenthal gets himself down to the Emirates to watch his beloved Arsenal, and he is adamant the sale of Emmanuel Adebayor has helped changed the club's fortunes.
"We've had a fantastic start. I went to the Portsmouth game at home and for the first 20 minutes in particular, we were just fantastic.
"With Emmanuel Adebayor leaving, we're less reliant on hoofing the ball long. We look really strong and hungry to score.
"People talking about booting Arsene Wenger out are just ridiculous. Teenage footballers can mature so much in one year, so our squad improvement year on year is huge. We've got strength in depth now too.
"We've spent the last few years rebuilding the team and now it's only a matter of time before the silverware returns."
