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SONIA STEVENSON, Chef Laureate of the British Academy of Gastronomes, A Master Chef of Great Britain for 25 years and the first woman in Great Britain to be awarded a Michelin star for cuisine. Famous for her cuisine at the award-winning Horn of Plenty Restaurant at Gulworthy, in Devon. It was named Britain's Restaurant of the Year by Egon Ronay, and won a Michelin star in the very first year that the Michelin Guide moved into Great Britain. Sonia has always been a trail-blazer. Garlanded with culinary awards from the Good Food Guide, as well as Michelin and Egon Ronay, she moved on to even greater heights. She was the first woman to be invited to cook at Maxim's in Paris, and her task was to cook for the 120 members of France's culinary aristocracy; three-star chefs and other notables from the Academie des Gastronomes and Club des Cent. Sonia began her working life as a professional violinist, but has shown since that she is a born chef, and now a born teacher and media performer. She has taught at major cookery schools, cooked as the visiting chef at great restaurants, including Maxim's and the London Ritz, and has also been featured in magazines and newspapers, and appeared on radio and television, including BBC TV's Masterchef.
Her husband Patrick writes... Sonia's humility is extraordinary. In the chapter devoted to her in Kit Chapman's book Great British Chefs, he states that 'the story of Sonia Stevenson is the story of the most celebrated lady chef of our generation'. Even after the restaurant which she founded became the first ever to be awarded two stars for cuisine by Egon Ronay on its first entry in his Guide, even after holding the top accolade of three stars for ten years and even after being the first woman ever to be invited into the Michelin three-star kitchens of Maxim's in Paris (and to prepare a dish there for them at that), she is even now always not only ready, but actually happy to learn from anyone. She was nineteen when we married and, becoming bored with bangers and mash, she asked the Master Butcher at Barkers for a leg of beef. He looked slightly unfocused. 'For how many, madam? ' 'Two.' In a totally changed voice he said confidentially, 'You got the wrong cut, ducks! ' and Instruction began. When we abandoned professional music (Sonia was a violinist) which had originally brought us together, but had proved uneconomic, in view of the reputation she had among our friends, a country restaurant seemed the best answer. Sonia was very frightened at the idea (she never has realized how marvellous she is) and so we approached our friends at the french hotel from which all our continental adventures started, the Grand Hotel Clement at Ardres, ten miles from Calais. They were very kind and invited us to spend five days in their kitchens to see the discipline, and how and in what order and by whom things were normally done in a professional establishment. Apart from two sensational afternoons with La Mere Brazier three years before, this constituted the only cookery lessons she ever had in her life. Seven days. So was born the Horn of Plenty in Devon, where one element was a total joy to everyone from the start Sonia's perfect sauces and gravies, which she always slightly altered to suit the particular preparation they were to accompany. The alterations were ongoing, and the results have always been lovely. It has always been the actual TASTE from our trips abroad which she was able to recall, rather than simply the appearance, and it has always been the TASTE of everything she prepares that counts. A case of not what it is but how it is done. Not what but how. And on her happy cookery courses, amidst a great deal of laughter, she can manage to teach others to produce those marvellous tastes. I have been a wonderfully lucky man. |
``No one had a greater influence on me." Rick Stein
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