Heston Blumenthal has confirmed that he is engaged to Melanie Ceysson, just days after reports emerged announcing his split from ex-partner Stephanie Gouveia.
The 56-year-old Michelin star-holding celebrity chef told The Daily Mail: “I have found my other half”.
As per the report, the pair reside in France together and have been been a couple for some months. Ceysson is reportedly a French businesswoman.
“I am going to get officially married to Melanie,” he told the publication, just three days after reports emerged alleging that he had split from Stephanie Gouveia, his previous partner and mother of his youngest child.
Despite reports that Blumenthal and Gouveia were married previously, a spokesperson for Gouveia told the publication that the pair were not legally married.
“Marriage should be recognised by legal authorities. This [relationship] wasn’t. What happened does not constitute a marriage in a legally binding sense,” the spokesperson told the publication.
In addition to his five-year-old with Gouveia, Blumenthal has three children with ex-wife, Zanna, who he divorced in 2016.
The chef declined to share further information about his new fiancée with the publication. The Independent has contacted representatives of Blumenthal for further comment.
Blumenthal, who owns restaurants the Fat Duck and Hind’s Head in Bray, Berkshire, and Dinner in London, moved to France in 2018 and has stayed out of the spotlight after he “had enough of cooking”.
In October, he opened up about feeling lonely and depressed during the height of his success.
In an interview with The Times, he said that although he was constantly surrounded by people, he actually felt “really lonely”.
In it, he praised his ex-wife Zanna for supporting him as his career started to accelerate.
“Certainly, my ex-wife was a huge reason for the success of the Duck… Someone had to take the kids to school and do all that work and look after the house, because I was never there.”
Blumenthal is widely credited as the pioneer of multi-sensory cooking, and became known for his unusual recipes, including snail porridge, Meat Fruit and bacon and egg ice cream.
The Fat Duck holds three Michelin stars, the last of which was awarded in 2004, and Blumenthal was appointed an OBE in the 2006 New Year’s Honours List for his services to British Gastronomy.
But he revealed that his road to success was driven by a need to “keep on, keep on, keep on,” he said, which led to him feeling “lost”.
“I was in London, in a big kitchen with loads of people, and then out from the kitchen into that sort of media world surrounded by people, but I look back and I was really lonely,” he said.
