Egon Ronay, the dapper Hungarian food critic who stamped his name indelibly on British culinary history, has died at the age of 94.
Ronay died on Saturday morning after being ill for a number of weeks, said his friend Nick Ross, the broadcaster. He had never retired and just a few weeks ago was telling friends about new projects he had in the pipeline with the BBC.
Ross, who had known Ronay for many years, said: “He was, in the most literal sense, incredible, right up until the last few weeks of his life. He was sharp as a button. We went for a tasting with him four months ago and he had this remarkable ability to taste flavors in anything.”
“Right up until his death, even young chefs regarded him as the monarch. He was a tiny man, but had no airs and graces about him, and yet he was almost fawned upon by restaurateurs right up until his last illness,” Ross said.
Simon Hopkinson, the acclaimed writer and cook, said on Saturday: “He was a great gourmet. His knowledge of food was encyclopedic and he had a continuing love for restaurants. He also had great style and generosity. He employed me as an inspector, and twice when I was caught speeding, he paid for my barrister and my fines.”
Ronay was born in Budapest in 1915, and arrived in London in 1946. He was seeking a new life after his father Miklos had lost the family estate and five restaurants he owned to the Russian occupation following World War II.
His father’s friends arranged for the young Egon to take a position managing a restaurant in Piccadilly. He quickly found his feet and soon took on his own 39-seat restaurant near Harrods called the Marquee, putting elegant French dishes on the menu and causing a stir in austere postwar London.
When the TV chef Fanny Cradock and her husband Johnny visited the Marquee, they persuaded others to take an interest in Ronay’s opinions and he began to write a food column for the Daily Telegraph in which he launched fearless attacks on standards, bemoaning school dinners.
In 1957, he completed the first edition of the Egon Ronay Guide. It grew in popularity and restaurants rapidly adopted a mention in the book as a mark of distinction; many of them proudly displayed the blue rosettes awarded by the guide in their window every year they were listed.
Based on the Michelin Guides, they were born out of a “genuine anger” about mass catering standards. Ronay made a point of ensuring their impartiality so that people could no longer get away with “murdering food.”
IDENTITY: A sex extortion scandal involving Thai monks has deeply shaken public trust in the clergy, with 11 monks implicated in financial misconduct Reverence for the saffron-robed Buddhist monkhood is deeply woven into Thai society, but a sex extortion scandal has besmirched the clergy and left the devout questioning their faith. Thai police this week arrested a woman accused of bedding at least 11 monks in breach of their vows of celibacy, before blackmailing them with thousands of secretly taken photos of their trysts. The monks are said to have paid nearly US$12 million, funneled out of their monasteries, funded by donations from laypeople hoping to increase their merit and prospects for reincarnation. The scandal provoked outrage over hypocrisy in the monkhood, concern that their status
The United States Federal Communications Commission said on Wednesday it plans to adopt rules to bar companies from connecting undersea submarine communication cables to the US that include Chinese technology or equipment. “We have seen submarine cable infrastructure threatened in recent years by foreign adversaries, like China,” FCC Chair Brendan Carr said in a statement. “We are therefore taking action here to guard our submarine cables against foreign adversary ownership, and access as well as cyber and physical threats.” The United States has for years expressed concerns about China’s role in handling network traffic and the potential for espionage. The U.S. has
A disillusioned Japanese electorate feeling the economic pinch goes to the polls today, as a right-wing party promoting a “Japanese first” agenda gains popularity, with fears over foreigners becoming a major election issue. Birthed on YouTube during the COVID-19 pandemic, spreading conspiracy theories about vaccinations and a cabal of global elites, the Sanseito Party has widened its appeal ahead of today’s upper house vote — railing against immigration and dragging rhetoric that was once confined to Japan’s political fringes into the mainstream. Polls show the party might only secure 10 to 15 of the 125 seats up for grabs, but it is
The US Department of Education on Tuesday said it opened a foreign funding investigation into the University of Michigan (UM) while alleging it found “inaccurate and incomplete disclosures” in a review of the university’s foreign reports, after two Chinese scientists linked to the school were separately charged with smuggling biological materials into the US. As part of the investigation, the department asked the university to share, within 30 days, tax records related to foreign funding, a list of foreign gifts, grants and contracts with any foreign source, and other documents, the department said in a statement and in a letter to
RSS