Benoit will be joining us for The Staff Canteen Live. He will be performing at 14:30 on Wednesday, January 21, at The Hospitality Show in Birmingham. We are extremely excited to welcome such a well respected name in the industry.
Present: Chef Patissier at Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, Oxford.
Past: Ritz, Paris; Normandy Hotel, Dauville
Michelin Stars: Two Michelin Stars
Benoit always wanted to be a chef as far back as he can remember. One day around age 9 or 10, his mother was cooking some pigeons, and told him that if he wanted to be a chef, to put his hands on the squab, start cleaning it up and all the rest, which he didn’t care for at all which meant he would not be cooking meat! His next exposure was with an aunt, who stopped by a pastry shop with him, and the rest is history.
At age 15, he had to make a choice to continue studying or go to an apprenticeship, so he spent a week at school, and three weeks apprenticing as a baker for the next two years in Villedieu-les-Poêles. He learned that baking was more of a production, and that he preferred the pastry side.
So he did a second apprenticeship of two years as a specialized pastry chef in Granville, 30 miles from home. At age 19, he served his one year in the military at “The cercle des officiers mariniers”, in Cherbourg. He negotiated with the Navy so that he would have time to study and take the master pastry exam, the “Brevet de Maîtrise Pâtissier” during his military service, of which he completed the three theoretical parts in that year.
At age 21, he met Bernard Meiss, in Coutances, while he was working in a bakery, and 18 months later Chef Meiss helped young Blin pass the Master Exam. After passing the exam, he went to work at the Normandy Hotel in Dauville, as a pastry chef in a gastronomic restaurant.
His sole passion however, was to work with the Meilleurs Ouvriers de France (MOF). Two years later, Chef Blin became the Chef de Partie in pastry at the Ritz Paris and that’s where his artistic skills developed. During that period from 1991 to 1995, every Friday evening, he would finish his job at the Ritz, and rush across Paris to a little sugar course, in the 6th Arrondissement, run by Monsieur Jean Creveux, in order to work with the MOF.
In 1994, he left the Ritz as the Senior Sous Chef, got married that fall, and it took him 3 months to accept a job at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons. He joined the staff as Head Pastry Chef in January 1995 and hasn’t looked back since.
