Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons closes in January for an eighteen-month rebuild. The chef who walks into the kitchen when it reopens holds three Michelin stars at two French addresses and has never cooked in Britain.
Belmond confirmed the dates this winter. The Oxfordshire hotel and restaurant shuts at the end of January 2026 and reopens in summer 2027. Forty-two years on from the day Raymond Blanc bought the manor house at Great Milton and put a stove in it.
The new Culinary Director is Arnaud Donckele. He runs La Vague d'Or at Cheval Blanc Saint-Tropez and Plenitude at Cheval Blanc Paris, both at three Michelin stars. The Le Manoir post is his first in Britain.
Two stars at Le Manoir, since 1984. Three Michelin Keys at the start of the new rating system. One Green Star for the kitchen garden. The numbers have not moved in years and Belmond has not asked them to.
Blanc steps back
Raymond Blanc, seventy-five, becomes Founder and Lifetime Ambassador. He keeps the seat in the gardens and the responsibility for the hotel's voice. Luke Selby has been head chef since 2023; the daily running of the kitchen had already moved across.
Thirty-four chefs trained at Le Manoir have gone on to win Michelin stars elsewhere. The line includes Marco Pierre White and Heston Blumenthal. Selby took the lineage forward without changing the temperature in the room.
The rebuild
The works carry a budget of £36 million, signed off by the local council in 2022. New guest rooms and suites are going into the Grade II listed main house. Garden villas are being built from the ground up. A spa is on the plan, along with a second restaurant.
The conservatory dining room is coming down. A new one will replace it on a different footprint. The cocktail bar moves to give the formal gardens an easier line of approach. A timber-clad barn at the edge of the property becomes the Raymond Blanc Academy, a teaching kitchen that sits beside the working one.
Forty years of two stars. The next chapter will be written in French, and finished in English.
The Splendid Edit
Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, Great Milton · Courtesy of Belmond
The French choice
Donckele is from Mont-Saint-Aignan in Normandy, near Rouen. La Vague d'Or, his Saint-Tropez kitchen at the Cheval Blanc, has held three Michelin stars since 2017. Plenitude in Paris reached three in 2022, less than a year after opening. Both kitchens trade on sauces.
The Le Manoir job runs across the estate rather than a single dining room. Donckele will set the new restaurant when it opens, and shape a second one alongside it. The kitchen-garden tradition Blanc planted in the 1980s stays at the centre. Donckele has worked with the gardens at Saint-Tropez in a similar way for two decades.
Belmond has been signing names from outside its standing roster all spring. Thebe Magugu took a suite at the Mount Nelson in Cape Town in February. Laura Gonzalez redid Villa Timeo in Taormina earlier this month. The pattern is to bring an outside hand into one hotel at a time. Le Manoir is the largest of those projects to date.
The grounds at Le Manoir, Oxfordshire · Courtesy of Belmond
Until the doors close in January, Blanc is still working. The autumn calendar runs to Christmas, with a four-hands dinner alongside Helene Darroze and a stack of carol nights. The restaurant will keep both stars right up to the last service.
Bookings for the reopening are not yet open. Summer 2027 is the window Belmond has named. The new dining room will be one of two restaurants on the estate. The chef has been chosen. The rest is timber, garden, and time.
Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, A Belmond Hotel, closes in January 2026 and reopens in summer 2027. Reservations through belmond.com.
Photography courtesy of Belmond · Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, Oxfordshire