The Connaught’s celebrated chef on his healthy new approach to food.

After a 14-year sabbatical, French chef Mr Jean-Georges Vongerichten has returned to London. His new 80-cover space resides in The Connaught hotel as a relaxed restaurant, designed to complement fellow countrywoman Ms Hélène Darroze’s two-Michelin-star dining room. His first London restaurant, Vong at The Berkeley, introduced the city to pan-Asian cuisine and, after a decade’s success, made way for Mr Gordon Ramsay’s Petrus in 2003. He now has restaurants in New York, Las Vegas, Paris, Shanghai, São Paolo and Tokyo and manages the menu at celebrity catnip hotel Eden Rock in St Barths. For the first instalment in a new series that explores the influences and philosophies of the world’s best chefs, MR PORTER caught up with Mr Vongerichten over lunch as he applied the finishing touches to his new venture, Jean-Georges at The Connaught.

I grew up in Alsace, which is near the Swiss border and has access to some amazing ingredients. My father was a coal distributor and he’d always have workers staying with us who needed feeding, and my grandmother did the honours with aplomb. My bedroom was above the kitchen and I quickly learned to work out what we were having from the smell. It was the start of my palate developing. I’d be at the kitchen at 12.29pm ready to eat and gradually started getting there earlier and earlier to help her cook. She taught me the basics and how to appreciate produce and treat it with the respect it deserves. My parents then took me to a three-Michelin-star restaurant for my 16th birthday and I was awestruck by the ballet of the waiters and the food they carried out. I knew what I wanted to do from that point forward.

When I first came to London in 1985, there were only a few outstanding restaurants: La Tante Claire, Le Gavroche and Mossiman’s. Now I’m back, London has the best restaurant scene in the world. You have access to the best produce: seafood from Scotland and the North Sea, English poultry and black Angus beef. It’s great to see the new generation of restaurants putting it to such good use. What my new restaurant is doing will be similar to The River Café: fresh, clean, healthy, delicious.

I’ve changed a lot in recent years to a far healthier style of food. I call it plant intelligence and vegetable forward. There was a lot of excess in the 1990s. No one really needs to eat a 20oz steak slathered in butter or with a ridiculously creamy sauce. At my restaurant abcV in New York, I serve 100 per cent vegetarian food with 90 per cent of it vegan. My customers have really embraced it and it’s a style of food I enjoy and want to eat regularly. Everyone wants to live longer and be healthier and I’m exactly the same. I’ve just turned 60 and I want to be here for another 30 years. I certainly think I’ve got more to offer.

The aroma in a restaurant is very important. I think we lost track of that for a while. Everything became so clinical and sanitised as chefs were using all these modern processes. Now I start with how things look and smell when they’re delivered to the table and work back from there. I like to create dishes that are carved or poured at the table so their smell can light up a room.

At The Connaught, for breakfast, I’ll be serving things such as chia bowls with delicious fruit. I’ll be making my own baked beans and topping them with a poached egg. There will be avocado toast, too, of course. Everyone is going mad for that at the moment. There will be some room for a serious bit of luxury, though. My truffle pizza will see to that.

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