EGON RONAY, the food critic who helped transform British eating habits, died on Saturday aged 94.
Ronay, who launched the era of restaurant reviews with the Egon Ronay guides, had been ill for a number of weeks. He died at his home in Berkshire with his wife Barbara and two daughters by his side, close friend and broadcaster Nick Ross said.
The former restaurateur became one of the world’s most famous reviewers, setting standards throughout the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.
He remained the doyen of food critics until well into his 70s and was continuously called upon for his culinary advice.
Ross, who said he had known Ronay for some 15 or 20 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.
“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.”
The son of a prominent restaurateur in Budapest whose business was destroyed by the Nazi and the Soviet advances, Ronay escaped from communist Hungary after the war and settled as a refugee in London.
He managed restaurants before opening his own place in Knightsbridge. But he soon became determined to improve the general quality of eating out in Britain which had long been subject to rationing and austerity.
Film director and restaurant critic Michael Winner expressed his sadness as he paid tribute to a food critic “superior to us all”.
“He was a wonderful person,” he said. “He had humility, he had this enormous knowledge but he was a very humble person. His death is a light gone out.
“He surpassed all the supercilious, arrogant, position-seeking food critics we have at the moment. He had a great heart, great dignity and great warmth.”
Chef Raymond Blanc credited Ronay with instilling a sense of self-belief in British chefs.
Speaking from his home in Oxfordshire, he said: “He managed to really push up the standard of British cuisine.
“He was meticulous, he was a visionary and he knew what gastronomy should be.
“There’s no doubt that he had a huge, huge influence and he helped British chefs to believe in themselves.”
Blanc’s famous restaurant, Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons, in Oxford, won Ronay’s Restaurant of the Year, just a year after it opened in 1977.
The self-taught chef said that recognition had “changed his life”.
Blanc said: “He (Ronay) was always helpful and supportive to young chefs. He helped me create my dream, to create Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons.”
Marco Pierre White said he owed “more to Egon than anyone else in the industry”.
“He made us all dream, he made us all want stars, he made us all work harder and created excitement – he was an extraordinary individual.” – (PA)