Egon Ronay surely knows more about food in Britain than anybody else. For 50
years his best-selling guides have been essential reading for foodies; they
helped to raise standards beyond all recognition and coaxed an initially
diffident public into looking for something tastier on their plates. Today
his influence remains undimmed: he recently infuriated the French by saying
that they could learn a thing or two from British gastropubs, and challenged
our Government to be clearer about organic food.
At 92, Ronay shows no appetite for retirement; he tried it once, in his
seventies, but was back at work within a month. This week he starts a new
monthly food column for Times Online, giving his views on a range of topics
including organic food, gastropubs and celebrity chefs, and answering
questions from readers.
His mission to transform our eating habits started when he arrived in London
as a penniless emigré from Hungary in 1946. From a family of restaurateurs,
he was angered by the appalling standards of catering in Britain: he still
shudders at the memory of a communal teaspoon attached to string in the
tearoom on Victoria Station. He recalls: “You could always get good food in
England, just not in many places.
The chefs were all French and you had to hunt down the restaurants where the
food was reasonably good. One of the only places you could get a good cup of
coffee was at the Wimbledon tennis tournament.”
Staying trim on four meals a day
Ronay is small and spry, with almost translucent skin, a primrose pullover
around his shoulders and mustard Nike trainers. He must have cut quite a
dash in his youth; he is still twinkly and fine-featured. His stories, told
in a pronounced Hungarian accent, conjure up an era of glittering society
restaurants, gay hussars and grand dinners with solid gold coffee pots.
A true gentleman in the old style, he keeps getting up from his rocking chair
to fetch things: cups of Earl Grey tea and a copy of the first guide, a thin
red volume published in 1957. And all this despite the walking stick he has
to use after a hip replacement operation a few months ago. It was the first
big procedure he has needed, and recovering from the anaesthetic proved the
biggest hurdle. He insists that he can manage without the stick, and can’t
wait to get rid of it and get back to daily exercise.
The real surprise is that he is so slim, after eating up to four meals a day
for years. He admits: “You can do it only if you have self-control. I love
to eat, but I don’t eat much. As a result, more often than not the
restaurant manager asks if there is something wrong and I say no, it’s just
that I had too much breakfast. Both my parents were quite corpulent, so I
suppose I would have been like that myself if I ate everything that I would
like to.”
Ronay puts his fantastic physical health and mental acuity down to good
fortune. But it must also have a lot to do with a keep-fit regimen he first
learnt at a boxing club he joined in his teens. The boxing didn’t last long,
but he has continued to do 25 minutes of the exercises every morning. “It’s
heavy exercise – push-ups and all that – because you have to get out of
breath to make it serious. Of course it helps prevent any weight problems. I
haven’t been able to do the exercises for several weeks because of the hip
operation, and I can hardly wait to do them again.” He used to play tennis
three mornings a week and skied twice a year until he gave it up about 15
years ago.
Delia is my ideal TV cook
For a man who has made a living from his uncompromising views Ronay is
surprisingly shy of sounding opinionated. He is diplomatic about the new
generation of restaurant critics. “Columns now are better written but less
informative,” he says. He is a huge fan of Gordon Ramsay’s restaurants, and
applauds Jamie Oliver’s efforts to improve school food, but he is less
complimentary about celebrity chefs and the proliferation of TV cookery
shows. He says: “Food programmes have become much more interesting but less
instructive. I am convinced they are not watched for the cookery content but
because they are produced well and exciting to watch. My own ideal is Delia
Smith; I think she was the best. It was not necessarily the most interesting
programme, but it took you through things you could learn. She was ridiculed
for explaining how to cook an egg but, in my view, it was justified.”
His praise for Delia comes as a surprise given his knowledge of haute cuisine
and his distinguished Mitteleuropean background. But he has never been a
food snob. He applauds the old Lyons Corner Houses as warmly as Le Gavroche.
He believes the welcome matters nearly as much as the food.
Beating Jamie Oliver to it
His 2006 guide championed the gastropub, although he dislikes the name, and he
deplores the expense of so much eating out, particularly the huge mark-up on
wine. It’s a practice he refused to follow at his small restaurant in
Knights-bridge in the early 1950s; it was described by the formidable TV
cook Fanny Cradock as “London’s most food-perfect small restaurant”. Its
success led to him being asked to write a column for The Daily Telegraph.
One of his articles, lambasting the terrible state of school food –
particularly in private schools – reached the leader pages. But it didn’t
have the Jamie Oliver impact, he admits. Having seen how influential
restaurant criticism could be, Ronay decided to publish his own restaurant
guide; at the time there was only one other on the market, Raymond
Postgate’s Good Food Guide. Ronay believes that his guide
became an instant bestseller because hisname was well established through
his newspaper column. The guide had huge clout because of his inside
knowledge of the restaurant business.
In Hungary the wealthy Ronay family owned five fine restaurants and a grand
hotel, and the young Egon, who always ate lunch with his parents, used to
listen to them chatting about the business. “Not once was profit discussed,”
he recalls. “Money didn’t come into it; it was a question of how to improve
things.” When he was older his father took him to restaurants every evening
to taste the sauces.
Ronay left his privileged life in Hungary under dramatic circumstances. His
family lost everything in the Russian occupation and Ronay was forced to
leave his wife and baby daughter behind for the first six months.
“It was very hard to leave because I was the only child and I left my parents
in circumstances they were not used to financially,” he says. “I used to
help them by sending stuff which they could sell. I supported eight or ten
people like that.” Ronay never saw his father again, and his mother only
once more.
London’s youngest restaurant manager
Arriving in London with no money was a huge shock, but thanks to his family
connections, he became the youngest restaurant manager in the city, running
two rather posh establishments in Piccadilly which were occasionally visited
by the then Princess Elizabeth and her sister Princess Margaret.
Ronay, who was granted British citizenship in 1951, still speaks his native
language occasionally with his two daughters, one of whom is Edina Ronay,
the fashion designer. He has two great-granddaughters. His Australian second
wife, Barbara, has one son, and the couple live in the Berkshire home that
was once their weekend escape from London. It is surrounded by farmland and
perfect for their two big, noisy dogs: a lurcher and a Doberman.
Years of dining for a living have not marred his enjoyment of food. He still
loves restaurants, and hopes to publish an Egon Ronay guide next year,
possibly online. He also enjoys cooking, though he rarely bothers with
recipe books. He also approves of organic food.
“I’m not particularly fussy about the health side of what I eat, except that I
try not to eat things that will cause me to put on weight. I’m fairly
careful about cutting the fat off a steak, but not in any fussy way. And I
don’t drink much, but I do enjoy a glass of wine. I usually eat a huge
breakfast, with cold meat and eggs, and often don’t eat again until dinner.
If I know I’m lunching out I cut breakfast to a cup of coffee and cereals.”
He makes no conscious efforts to keep his brain sharp, although he reads for
two hours every day before going to sleep, always biography or history. He
has an amazing memory. “When something important happens I remember the dish
because of the event, and vice versa: when I have a memorable dish I
remember what it was, with whom I ate it and what happened.”
Ronay used to be rather coy about revealing his age, but now he says: “Age is
an advantage because I don’t think anybody has had as wide and long an
experience of restaurants as I. And I don’t think my taste is different now
from 40 or 50 years ago. Taste doesn’t depend on age, it depends on the
person.”
EGON RONAY ONLINE
The godfather of gastronomy kicks off his new Times Online column, which
starts today, with a look at celebrity chefs
timesonline.co.uk/realfood
How wonderful to read of egon ronay. So pleased to hear he will be writting a column. Glad to hear he endorses Delia.
valerie kent, Hastings Sussex, u.k