Truffled eggs at Raymond Blanc’s Michelin-starred Le Manoir restaurant

After eating at Noma in Copenhagen, the late great A. A. Gill wrote of having had a “palate-tattooing dinner”. You don’t need to go that far. There’s similarly indelible dégustation in the village of Great Milton in Oxfordshire. There has been for years.

Just as we all should eat our five fruit or veg a day, so too should we all eat at least one truly world-class dinner in our lifetime, and the Cristiano Ronaldo of the culinary world is but a 55-minute drive from Golders Green.

Going now feels like going deep into extra time, long after the 90 minutes is up, not because the wielder of its two long-held Michelin stars – Raymond Blanc – is tottering and decrepit, but because he only narrowly survived Covid. After a month in hospital on oxygen, he is now back in the kitchen, yet very nearly wasn’t.

Sadly, his beloved mother – Maman Blanc, in later years even more famous than he – did not survive the pandemic, passing aged 97. It is to her that he dedicates much of his cooking, so it is to her that we give thanks as we tuck in.

These days, Mrs O eats for two. Our visit was delayed by three months to let the morning sickness pass. Over seven courses, baby-to-be got the best introduction to the wonder and variety that is food. See, already good parents.

Seasonality is central here, hence the name: Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons. Even the cheese that a sharp-suited bow-tied serveur unveiled, unwrapped, fondled, dangled, then finally dropped into our cups of French onion soup is seasonal, a meltingly good Vacherin Mont d’Or only available for a few months of the year, produced between 15 August and 15 March.

The changing bounty of the seasons still acts as the menu’s creative director, with Le Manoir’s gardens its chief supplier. Many a dish has a carbon footprint of about 30 feet. A highlight course – truffled hen’s egg with wild mushroom tea (yes, tea.) – owes its success to the morels, shiitake, and wood blewit oft to be found in the hotel’s shaded mushroom valley.

This, in part, is why people pay what they pay to stay and eat here, and what turns it from a ‘dinner’ into an ‘experience’. Twelve hours after the three-hour seven-course tasting lesson, en route to breakfast, you wander past the bronze sculptures alive in mid-morning light to survey the herb borders, potager, and vegetable beds from whence last night’s dishes came.

For guests like us who want to unwind, the Japanese Tea Garden proved a first-rate heartrate lowerer, just as the bench by the water was the perfect place to discuss our new palate tattoos.

Did we really just eat and enjoy a dessert comprising milk chocolate, soft caramel, and parsnip? Wasn’t that coconut and ginger the perfect eulogy to that Cornish Turbot? And do you think we could recreate that blood orange carpaccio at home?

No, we couldn’t. Not in a million Sundays. Even if we got close, it wouldn’t have the magic. Credit to Belmond Hotels and Monsieur Blanc for taking those classic ingredients – luxury, tradition, charm, atmosphere, flair, and passion – to create the perfect dish.

One down, three more seasons to go.