Andrew Turvil

“really struggled to find anyone actually using their intelligence in the kitchen.’1 The mid-1980s were certainly seminal for restaurant openings in London: Marco at Harveys, Simon Hopkinson at Bibendum, Alastair Little in Soho, Rowley Leigh at Kensington Place, and Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray at The River Cafe. It is perhaps true that this handful of pioneering chefs did spend the closing years of the decade pushing against the formalities of French haute cuisine. But these few outliers didn’t really constitute a dynamic food culture in themselves. It was in the 1990s that the culture truly shifted and an existential change to dining out occurred: that was when a growing number of ambitious chefs, innovators and empire builders, fuelled by a booming food media and a new curiosity, helped create the perfect storm of culinary change.”
― Andrew Turvil, Blood, Sweat and Asparagus Spears: The Story of the 1990s Restaurant Revolution