London used to be a culinary laughing stock. Andrew Turvil, restaurant critic and former editor of The Good Food Guide, tells us how that all changed in the 1990s in today’s Notebook

The 1990s restaurant revolution that shaped London for good

Have you noticed how stories about the 1990s seem to be everywhere right now? Helped no doubt by the coming back together of a certain couple of brothers from Manchester. While you’re pondering that, perhaps gazing out over London from the 24th floor of Tower 42 in the luxe art-deco comfort of City Social’s bar, sipping on a Golden Mirage, or tucking into a California roll high up Heron Tower at Sushi Samba, spare a thought for those city workers who have gone before you and found themselves working in an era before the 1990s restaurant revolution, when London was something of an international culinary laughing stock.

Change was forged in the ‘90s by a bold and diverse bunch of chefs and restaurateurs, who challenged the tired and limited orthodoxy of eating out in this country, and broke new ground. The spark of change was ignited by Michelin-starred Frenchmen such as Albert Roux and Raymond Blanc, who trained up a new generation of Brits like Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay. But this new culinary order was not all about French........

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