Jean-Christophe Novelli
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| Jean-Christophe Novelli | |
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| Born | February 22, 1961 Arras, France |
Jean-Christophe Novelli (born 22 February 1961) is a French celebrity chef.
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[edit] Career
[edit] Life
Born in Arras, Northern France, in 1961, in a family who has ultimately Italian roots, Jean-Christophe Novelli worked in a bakery before becoming (at the age of 20) a personal chef to the Rothschild family.
He moved to Britain in 1983, to run Keith Floyd's Maltster's Arms restaurant in Totnes, Devon. He won the first of two Michelin stars at Le Provence in Lymington before becoming head chef at the Four Seasons Hotel on Hyde Park Corner.
In 1996 he founded his restaurant, Maison Novelli, in Clerkenwell, Central London. He has opened further restaurants in London, France and South Africa and continues to expand his activities, acting a chef patron or consultant to various establishments and moving into the gastro-pub market, the first of which was "The White Horse", in Harpenden. He appeared in the first series of The Games in 2003 and also became a head chef on Hell's Kitchen in 2005. In the same year he opened a cooking school called the Novelli Academy at his Hertfordshire farmhouse near Luton.
He has 21 dogs most of them Doberman Pinschers and drives a Porsche Cayenne [1]
On 5th September 2007 Novelli was awarded Honorary Doctor of Arts from the University of Bedfordshire.
Twice divorced with a 20 year old daughter named Christina from his first marriage [1] Novelli got engaged in November 2007 to his girlfriend of 2 years, Michelle Kennedy, with the couple announcing in February 2008 that they are expecting their first child. [2]
[edit] Other work
In 2006, Novelli appeared on The X Factor: Battle of the Stars, performing in a group with fellow chefs Aldo Zilli, Paul Rankin and Ross Burden. Novelli can presently be seen on the new ITV1 programme …Cooks!
He has been a contestant on Family Fortunes and on 2nd May 2007 appeared on "You're Fired!" on BBC Two, the show following "The Apprentice" on BBC One.
[edit] Trivia
In an interview on the BBC's Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, Novelli burnt and scratched (with a knife) Jonathan Ross' desk in a cooking demonstration. He is also a member of the celebrity audience in Derren Brown's TV special "The Gathering."
[edit] References
- ^ In bed with 'ze world's sexiest chef' Jean Christophe Novelli | the Daily Mail
- ^ Celebrity chef Jean-Christophe Novelli and fiancée expecting first child : Celebrity Baby Blog
