Iconic chef Nico Ladenis dies aged 89

Iconic chef Nico Ladenis has died aged 89.

Ladenis was a self taught chef who won three Michelin stars and a rare 10 out of 10 in the Good Food Guide for his restaurant Nico at Ninety in London in the mid 1990s, inspiring a generation of British chefs in the process.

He was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2015 Cateys and on receiving the award admitted he only started in hospitality at the age of 37, having left the oil industry after being told he was “argumentative, aggressive, uncompromising and not a company man”.

Ladenis inspired a generation of chefs who revered his precise cooking and uncompromising style. In 2001 The Caterer reported that there was a cartoon at the entrance to the headquarters of Nico Ladenis's empire which was then focussed on London's Grosvenor House hotel. It showed an irate Ladenis brandishing a meat cleaver and chasing a couple of terrified diners from Chez Nico. One of the diners says to the other: "Well I didn't know he hadn't got his third star in the Michelin Guide!"

Ladenis was a chef-restaurateur who divided opinion. There were the hugely loyal and enthusiastic band of customers who followed him from the moment he took to the stove at Chez Nico in Dulwich, south London, in 1973, to what became his crowning glory, Chez Nico at 90 Park Lane, 20 years later in the Grosvenor House hotel.

However, he also earned notoriety for insisting that “the customer is not always right” – stemming from his insistence on giving short shrift to rude and pompous diners who proclaimed “to all and sundry, both staff and other diners, that they are very important people.”

The reality was that he was deeply thoughtful and totally immersed in achieving perfection, and it became difficult for him to accept that others didn’t understand his approach.

Born in 1934 in Tanzania to Greek parents, Ladenis attended the University of Hull as an economics student. For the next 13 years he floundered, never fitting into the various corporations he worked for, but a spell in the advertising department at The Sunday Times proved fortuitous, for it was where he met his future wife, Dinah-Jane.

The couple travelled extensively through France and developed a taste for good food and wine. While Ladenis had previously partnered his best friend Theodore Galakis to open his first restaurant, the Blue Aegean, in 1971, the expedition to France sowed the seed to be more ambitious and create the very best French restaurant. Upon returning to London, they launched the Dulwich eaterie.

Ladenis had never intended to cook – it was only when the chef didn’t turn up one day that he stepped into the kitchen – and Dinah-Jane assumed the role of maitre d’.

Ladenis was self-taught as a chef, using the Masterpieces of French Cuisine by Francis Amunategui as guidance, and he cooked according to the principles of “precision, restraint and simplicity”. It was a philosophy that carried him through his career – across 11 restaurants – and won him the Catey award as Chef of the Year in 1988 and three Michelin stars.

The first star was achieved after Ladenis had moved his restaurant to Battersea, with the second following three years later. The third came at the fifth incarnation of Chez Nico at 90 Park Lane, when he was 60 years old. It was the fulfilment of an ambition from the day he started cooking and which, unusually, rendered him speechless.

Writing in White Heat, Marco Pierre White said that from Ladenis he learned “the slow pursuit of perfection” and “the constant quest to lift everything one notch higher the whole time”. He continued: “I’ve never met anyone who had as much appreciation of food as Nico does. He loves eating. If he hadn’t been a great chef he would have been the most knowledgeable and respected food journalist.”

Another protégé Jason Atherton said that Ladenis played a significant role in dragging London out of the culinary doldrums. “He was not only a world-class chef, but was also the ultimate restaurateur,” he explained. “Attention to detail was in his blood and three stars were his destiny.”

Chef Paul Gayler described Ladenis as "the epitome of a true restaurateur and great chef".

He added: "He set the standard all us younger chefs tried to achieve. I was lucky to have him as a friend, he regularly visited me to eat both at Inigo Jones in the 80’s and at the Lanesborough for lunch during the 90’s.

"It was always a great honour to cook for him and Dinah-Jane. It felt like being in the presence of royalty. The industry has a lot to thank Nico for. May he rest in peace with the knowledge of a great job well done."

Steve Drake, who worked under Ladenis as a commis chef, said: "I’m so saddened to hear this news. Nico to me was an inspiration and one of if not the greatest chef of his generation.

"He was a pioneer and few understood where he was going back in the 70s and 80s. For me he was a man of achievement, never settling for second best and pushed himself daily to be the very best he could be and encouraged everyone around him to do the same. I feel privileged to have worked for him and Dinah-Jane."

Royal Academy of Culinary Arts chairman and Ritz executive chef John Williams said: “Nico Ladenis will go down in the history of British Gastronomy as one of our very best chefs and a true gentleman. He was an honorary member of the academy and never failed to stimulate conversation and debate. Our thoughts are with his family at this time.”

Ladenis is survived by his wife Dinah-Jane Ladenis and two daughters Natasha Robinson and Isabella Wallace.

If you would like to share your memories and tributes please email james.stagg@thecaterer.com