Willan, Anne.

A few days before the École de cuisine La Varenne opened in Paris on the rue Saint-Dominique near Les Invalides in November 1975, the American food critic Craig Claiborne gave his blessing to the new cooking school in a New York Times article. Notwithstanding the smell of fresh paint and the necessity to make his way over the newly installed telephone lines, Claiborne described his visit to the establishment as uplifting. Named after the French cook François-Pierre de la Varenne (1618-1678), the school was from the onset endowed with the financial support and logistical advice of culinary experts Julia and Paul Child, James Beard, Simone "Simca" Beck, and that of Nick Brown-the brother of J. Carter Brown, director of the US National Gallery of Art. The cooking school benefited from the unwavering partnership of its director, Anne Willan, with her husband Mark Cherniavsky, a World Bank economist and a collector of antiquarian books. Willan ensured the continuing success of La Varenne and the culinary programs she directed in Paris, Burgundy, West Virginia, and later Santa Monica, California. In 2014, Willan was awarded the rank of Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur for her work over several decades on the promotion of French gastronomy.

Anne Willan was born on January 26, 1938, in Yorkshire, raised in a house near Newcastle surrounded by wheat fields, cattle, and church towers that could be seen over the hills in the distance. Her childhood memories are filled with freshly baked crisp ginger biscuits, tasty bacon, egg pie and pig lardon, with Thursday being the "baking day, the best day of the week." After receiving her master's degree in Economics from Girton College at the University of Cambridge, she pursued an advanced course at the Cordon Bleu School of Cookery in London. After completing these studies, to the chagrin of her parents, she did not marry the well-mannered son of the chief librarian of Oxford's Bodleian Library nor a fine Yorkshireman. Willan credits her restlessness to her adventurous and well-traveled maternal grandfather, whose wealth also helped finance some of her initiatives. Instead of returning to Yorkshire, she moved to Paris in the winter of 1963 and went on to earn a Grand Diplôme at the École de Cordon Bleu. Willan was then hired by Florence and Gérald Van der Kemp to help with their entertainment efforts related to raising funds for the restoration of the Château de Versailles. After a stint as a Gourmet Magazine employee in New York, Willan became a food editor for The Washington Star, and began writing cookbooks, developing a passion for food writing.

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