From Ray Parkes to the Roux Brothers

However, perhaps the most notable forerunner of today’s breed of young British chefs at the end of the Fifties was Ray Parkes – a man who abandoned his architectural studies to cook. His work included spells at La Bicyclette and the Chanterelle before opening his own restaurant in Beauchamp Place in 1960. Parkes’s cooking was a revelation because, in effect, he introduced nouvelle cuisine to London at a time when Anton Mosimann was barely out of short trousers and 13 years before the French food critics, Henri Gault and Christian Millau, coined the expression. The source of Parkes’s inspiration was Fernand Point, the proprietor of La Pyramide in Vienne, one of the greatest restaurants in France, and the father of nouvelle cuisine. Egon Ronay described Parkes as a genius and culinary surrealist, noting in the 1962 edition of his guide: ‘My wife’s choice (melon in Yquem) would have certainly looked as smart on her head (at a masked ball) as it was appetizing.’ Sadly, Ray Parkes died in 1963 which meant that he left no lasting culinary legacy.