Pierre Koffmann, Koffmann's at the Berkeley, London

Pierre Koffmann is most famous for his three Michelin starred restaurant La Tante Clare. The French chef moved to England in 1970 because of his love for rugby, and quickly found himself working for the Roux brothers. Pierre’s style is classical provincial French cooking, inspired by the food of his childhood in the French countryside and from the kitchen of his grandparent’s farmhouse in rural Gascony. Before he came to England, Pierre left school at 14 and joined the local cookery school. From there he travelled to Strasbourg, the French Riviera and then Lausanne in Switzerland before settling in England. Within six months of working at Le Gavroche he became the number two, and after briefly working at the Roux’s Brasserie Benoit, Pierre was appointed head chef at the then new Waterside Inn. In the five years that he worked there, the restaurant received two Michelin stars. Pierre and his first wife Annie opened La Tante Claire in Chelsea in 1977 and the restaurant gained three Michelin stars before it was moved to the Berkeley Hotel in 1998. While chef patron of La Tante Claire, Pierre trained some of today’s top chefs such as Tom Aikens, Tom Kitchin, Marco Pierre White and Bruno Loubet. Between them the many chefs he trained now hold over 20 Michelin stars. He decided to retire in 2003, but became bored after a year and came back to the hospitality sector as a consultant to some major food retailers. He worked with The Royal Opera House, the Lawns Restaurant at Thornton Hall Hotel and Morrisons. He was part of a national advertising campaign for Morrisons, and was one of five chefs who launched the Morrisons pop up restaurants across the UK. Customers were invited to dine for free on the new range and rate what they felt their experience was worth. In 2009 he agreed to open a ‘pop-up’ La Tante Clare for the Restaurant on the Roof at Selfridges for supposedly one week only, to celebrate the London Restaurant Festival. This actually lasted three months, and afterwards he returned to The Berkeley to open Koffmann’s with his partner and business partner Claire. His cookbook, Memories of Gascony, was released in 2012 and tells the story of how he came to love food and appreciate seasonality while cooking with his grandmother.