Reaching a fortieth birthday is a remarkable feat for a restaurant, but Le Manoir has always stood out. It jumped straight to two Michelin stars the year after opening and has held onto them ever since, cementing its status as a destination restaurant for fine dining fans across the world (one in which, Raymond has said, his working class father would feel at home). Anglophile Raymond, meanwhile, has been credited with having an unmatched impact on the UK’s food scene over the last three decades; he sought out organic ingredients long before they were widespread, has become a champion for British heritage fruit and locally-sourced produce and was a pioneer of what would become molecular gastronomy (Raymond previously spoke to us about culinary physics here).

The manifestation of Raymond's vision is, of course, most evident at Le Manoir; it's home to a vast orchard with 150 cultivars of apple, a two-acre organic kitchen garden (which provides the kitchen with everything from beetroot to courgette flowers), a mushroom valley, twenty-seven acres of manicured gardens and, most recently, beehives. Soon, that will be joined by a vineyard, as well as a wellness spa, brasserie and garden villas under redevelopment plans which will see the hotel double in size. Luke's appointment might be part of those changes, but his attention will stay in the kitchen (‘there’s redevelopment coming, but it’s not my job to think about that – my focus is getting the food and service to the best it can be’), introducing modern techniques, like liquid nitrogen to make granitas, including those inspired by his time in Japan (Luke's Roux Scholarship prize was a stage at the three-star Nihonryori Ryugin).

Luke and Raymond are currently poring over a catalogue of Le Manoir recipes, simplifying and modernising dishes where needed, while holding onto their essence. ‘We’ve been going through a big journey of refining the cuisine, looking back at the past forty years,’ Luke nods. ‘There’s a huge database and information pool that has been kept of classic recipes that Raymond created all that time ago. Even now some of them are modern, but we’re just tweaking the presentation of flavours and I have my own spin on the dishes as well.’

When asked for an example, he points to the garden beetroot terrine (‘Raymond always works with the seasons, and our land is very good at growing beetroot so it’s always been on the menu’), which has had a Selby refresh, tweaked into a frozen beetroot mousse which is dipped into beetroot jelly. ‘The mousse defrosts, so it’s very light and airy, but holds its shape and then has this really thin jelly around it,’ Luke explains. ‘Then we have pickled beetroot from the garden that we cut into flowers, and it gets served with a horseradish sorbet, so it’s a modern interpretation of a very classic dish. Raymond talks a lot about simplicity, but simplicity doesn’t mean just removing things from the plate – it’s a higher focus on the quality of ingredient and provenance, buying the best that we can but then treating it simply, trying to draw out the best from that one product.’

Long known as a springboard for the brightest cheffing talent (Heston Blumenthal, Michael Caines, Eric Chavot and Marco Pierre White are among its alumni), kitchen culture at Le Manoir is geared around training, with many of its highest-profile graduates recognising it as both a culinary finishing school and a restaurant. With a young team, most in their mid-twenties, Luke says that’s unlikely to change. ‘We have a big training programme where there’s an individual plan for every member which sees them go through every section in the kitchen,’ he nods. ‘When you get up to sous chef level, then we also invest in various training courses, management courses, finance courses. Eventually they’ll be a head chef and they’ll run their own kitchen one day, so we want to have them prepared for that.’

Since arriving, Luke has moved the team to a four-day week and kickstarted a recruitment drive; when he started, they were ten under where they needed to be – today they have a waiting list of eighteen chefs, with a fully-staffed headcount of fifty-four. ‘It’s about retention of staff, especially coming out of Covid,’ Luke explains. ‘The industry has been in a very difficult situation. It still is, but we’re doing things very differently, and that was always Raymond’s vision; to be the beacon of light of how things should be done, how we should be treating our staff and paving the way for everybody else. The Manoir is such an institution and it’s the perfect platform to be able to achieve that.’

When it comes to looking ahead, Le Manoir may have a head start in one regard. As restaurants get to grips with what real sustainability looks like, there are lessons to be learned from Le Manoir, which was awarded a green Michelin star in 2021 and has long prioritised its eco-friendly efforts. Raymond – president of the Sustainable Restaurant Association – grows over 250 organic varieties of fruit and vegetables at Le Manoir, including in its Soil Association-certified vegetable garden. Over half of its wines are organic and biodynamic, it doesn’t accept single-use packaging from suppliers, seafood is creel or pot caught only and there’s a closed-loop waste system in action. A new sustainability champions team – with members from across the hotel – has also been put in place.

Though some elements of progression are inarguable, others need a lighter touch, and Luke knows that at a restaurant with such a legacy, there is a balance to be struck between custom and change. Where those decisions fall comes down to the dynamic between him and Raymond, who he describes as a ‘huge visionary’. ‘It’s a really good partnership – I feel like there’s a lot of trust there between us both,’ Luke says with a smile. ‘This is his baby, so it’s a very special thing.’

Luke compares that equilibrium to building a house, and the need for strong foundations for everything else to succeed. 'Raymond will always be the beating heart of Le Manoir and everything we do follows his ethos and values, which we’re very much one and the same on,’ he says. ‘We have people who have been coming here since it first opened forty years ago, so we want to respect the traditions of the house, but take it into a modern era. It’s a big deal in the industry to have a property that’s held two Michelin stars for almost forty years, so it’ll be a double celebration next year – looking back at the legacy and the vision moving forwards. It’s a very exciting time.’