Oxfordshire is spearheading a UK food revolution, TV chef Raymond Blanc told a city food and wine festival at the weekend.

The chef, who has run county restaurants since 1972, told the Oxford Castle Food and Wine Festival that his adopted country was finally discovering local, fresh produce.

The Frenchman, whose Great Milton restaurant Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons boasts two Michelin stars, said on Saturday: “Food has changed tremendously.

“It is not so dramatic to say we always behave responsibly, but we cannot expect that after 50 years of behaving badly, a five-year miracle will change everything.

“We have treated food as unimportant, but that is now changing, and food festivals are part of that.”

Also citing the Earth Trust’s Children’s Food Festival in Wittenham, he said: “It is exciting to see Oxfordshire is really taking a lead in food festivals.”

Mr Blanc said: “When I first came to Britain in 1972, the first thing I wanted to do as a chef was to buy local.

“I went to Aylesbury to buy an Aylesbury duck, but they had all gone.

“Oxford Sandy and Black pigs no longer exist in Oxfordshire, but they are raised in Spain. We are in the process of reversing that. It is exciting, but it is difficult.”

The food festival, now in its second year, featured over 90 exhibitors and comes ahead of the launch of a fortnightly farmers’ market at the castle this Thursday.

Festival organiser Sarah Mayhew said: “Local produce is really important, and I think there is an enormous move in that direction in Oxfordshire.”

Exhibitor Mattias Sjoberg, of Cowley’s Compass Brewery, said: “More people are getting a buzz out of buying something that is local, even if it costs a bit more.”

Robin Holmes-Smith, of The Granary delicatessen in Watlington, said the county was “pretty poor” for local producers when he started nine years ago.

He said: “Now producers pop up all the time, and it’s been driven by consumers.”