BBC2 Announces New TV Series
Raymond Blanc France

Alison Kirkham, Commissioning Editor of Factual Features and Formats on BBC Two, today announced a new five part series which will see Chef Raymond Blanc cooking in his homeland and celebrating great local French food.

Raymond Blanc France (working title) builds on the success of The Restaurant and Raymond Blanc’s Kitchen Secrets by taking the Michelin starred ‘prodigal son’ back to the simple recipes that inspired his style in his native France.

Raymond Blanc is one of Britain’s greatest French chefs and adopted son, receiving an OBE in recognition for his services to food in the country, but surprisingly he was never a chef in France.

So now he is travelling back to the country he loves, to the diverse ingredients and simple French recipes, and to the kind of restaurants that originally inspired him to become a chef-patron.

In each episode Blanc and two of his young British protégés will go to a small local restaurant in a different region of France and create a “one night only” menu, accentuating French provincial cooking at its best which is achievable in your own home. The series will take viewers to Provence, Lyon, Burgundy, Alsace and to Jura in his beloved Franche-Comte. Each area has its own ingredients and distinctive cuisine.

Raymond and his protégés will source wholesome local and seasonal ingredients from the farms, markets and specialist producers in the region, from which he and the team will then create a fixed priced menu consisting of typical dishes of the region but with the usual Raymond Blanc flair. As well as creating an enticing menu, Raymond will run the service with his young team for the customers.

Raymond Blanc France will show case Raymond’s expertise in the most passionate, most informative, most engaging way.  Blanc France will be his love letter to rural France and the world he grew up in. It will be a celebration of local and seasonal produce. It will be packed full of recipes that can be made at home. It will show how to put together a simple menu and an insight into how a real kitchen works. Most of all it will be an emotional journey for one of the great chefs to the place he loves. Raymond Blanc "I want to inspire young chefs and show them how French food is deeply connected with its many regions. I hope the series will show how France takes local produce from field to plate and how we in the UK could adopt our very own regional food culture"

Alison Kirkham, Commissioning Editor, Factual Features and Formats on BBC Two: “Raymond Blanc France is a unique series which sits well on BBC Two as the home of distinctive cooking excellence. It’s quite a coup to be able to take one of the world’s top chefs back to his homeland to cook for the first time; we’ll be looking at Raymond Blanc’s expert knowledge in a completely new way.”

Executive Producer, Alan Brown: “Raymond Blanc taught himself to be a great chef. What's incredible is that he did it in Britain after leaving France as a young waiter. But his drive and passion directly connects with his love of the ingredients and the recipes of France. I am enormously excited about taking him back to France to see him teach two of his British protégés with the food that inspired him.”

Raymond will be blogging about his adventures. To keep up to date with his experiences, follow his blogs here

Follow Raymond Blanc on Twitter