HIS restaurant may have just been named one of Britain’s top three eateries, but, by his own admission, Raymond Blanc is grumpy.

The chef saw his Michelin starred restaurant Le Manoir Aux Quat’ Saisons, in Great Milton, climb five places from last year’s eighth spot in the 2011 Good Food Guide, released this week.

But he has been out of the kitchen for months now with a broken leg – and, he says, is becomingly increasingly frustrated by his inability to do what he loves most in the world – cook.

“It has been very boring,” he said, “and patience is something you either have or you don’t, but then kitchens are so angular with all that stainless steel, they are not easy things to return to.

“I can prop myself up against the stove, but I can’t get around. And when you haven’t walked for five months you get tired so quickly, because none of the muscles work.”

Tomorrow (Saturday) he is book signing at Oxford’s Waterstones and promoting the latest addition to the RB library, A Taste of Relais and Chateaux, to which he has contributed.

“I love book signings,” Mr Blanc said.

“I think they are very rewarding, although the best part is writing the books in the first place and working with the photographers so that the pictures get your juices flowing and you want to eat the food on the page.

“Signings are like meeting your guests; it’s the people who believe in what you do, the people who buy and read and cook from your books. The only sad thing is that too often there isn’t enough time to engage with them all.”

In a few weeks the 60-year-old starts filming the next part of his hugely successful TV series Kitchen Secrets and will be back in the kitchen as soon as possible.

In the meantime he has been compiling some new recipes, as well as running the Brasserie Blanc chain, the Maison Blanc cafes, and Le Manoir – which fell just behind Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck, in Bray, Berkshire; and Gordon Ramsay’s Royal Hospital Road, London, in the Which? produced restaurant guide.

“In A Taste of Relais and Chateaux I wrote the recipes in the winter with the produce that was on hand, so it is very much a late autumn entry — pears, winter vegetables, oysters and scallops,” he said.

“Everything needs to centre around the seasons. That’s how Le Manoir is defined and always has been, by what you can get.”

  • Raymond Blanc will be at Waterstone’s bookshop in Broad Street tomorrow at 2pm to sign copies of all his books, including A Taste of Relais and Chateaux to which he contributed.

kmacalister@oxfordmail.co.uk