Inside London’s Restaurant Scene with Tom Parker Bowles

30:57These were there to feed. It was mainly men they were feeding. And Simpsons originally didn't allow women in the main dining room. Really? There was a ladies room upstairs. And so it was incredibly male, incredibly middle-aged. You know, it was lots of claret because the British always loved claret. We've always had that unique relationship with Bordeaux, Especially when it was They were our only friends at one point Through various marriages and stuff And we didn't pay taxes for example On Bordeaux and all the rest of it Actually Port was another one But Simpsons was I think it was a slightly aspirational I'd say the thing You might find I think they would have all been at the Ritz The Real Toffs or their clubs But I think Simpsons was Like many great London restaurants It took everyone in As long as you were a man Had some money and you know you tipped you tipped your carver and all the rest of it and i'm very excited and uncle simon at greens what he wanted to do was create a club that wasn't a club although it did sort of turn into a club but there'd always be ronnie corbett margaret thatcher yeah he mother um you know but you know and you simon always always dressed in hermese tie and and a well cut suit and you go for lunch with him and you know he would have his goujons but there was haddock Parker Bowles named after my grandfather.

32:17I just love going in to have a dozen natives. Sausage and mash. Sausage and mash. That was always the thing that I had because it was the only thing I was sort of confident enough to eat. It was. It was. But it was a club within a club. And still to this day, I'm reading these fantastic thrillers at the moment. But I can't remember. It's about Mossad. It's a guy called Gabriel Alon. And he's a sort of picture restorer. Daniel Silver is a writer. And a brilliant thriller. and anyway the art restorer who's also in the pay of Mossad has a has a uh an art because you know it's the middle of the art world has an office office at greens and they spent endless long lunches in greens i kept meaning to say to simon about this sort of this is sort of is a hardcore mossad agents but also picture restores and very elegant but uh yes but that's very much in the tradition of a gentleman's club wasn't it yes it was yes and actually to be honest i love maison francois that's taken its place it has a scene all of its own maison francois when you get a lot of the old people from greens going back there you always see um yeah the art world sort of luminaries of the art world hang this sort of you know davis snowden's and henry windham's and you know i have a brackers that sort of gang um because it's next to southern christie's and stuff yeah but i think but back to wilton's it was wilton's was and still is quite expensive um you couldn't i'd love to go there every day but i'd be number one dead of liver failure gout gout but they do the pudding trolley and they do the roast and you can still get hot gammon and roast gammon and okay so but okay fine so did hotels we're talking about homes you've got your odd standouts like wilton's or rules and things that are old restaurants but ultimately hotels homes were ruining the roost at what point did people decide i'm going to dispense of the sort of clubby probably sort of royal feel of restaurants and create an enterprise that is fully democratic and doesn't have to live up to a specific English, sort of old English standard.

34:14Well, I think the first thing with hotels, and you think of Claridge's, the Savoy, of course, I think Savoy was the first to have running, on the Sweet Bartoms, I think. Everyone had an on the Sweet Bartom, which was a huge thing. Yeah, amazing. Yeah, huge thing. But the whole point of that was that women, You could have lunch with whoever, your mother, your grandmother, your aunt, your mistress. You know, that made it. And also French was seen as, you know, this very elegant. And you had all these great chefs cooking at the Ritz and all these places. And, you know, Claridge is, oh, stop it now.

34:46Sit down. You're being particularly annoyed. Sit down. I'm afraid they say dogs have, terriers have absolutely, no, sit down. Good girl. Naughty girl. Anyway. But it was the democratization. But it wasn't really that democratic. you still had quite a lot of money to go there. What you'd find, pubs were very much a place, you know, to eat for the so-called normal person. The problem with London always was, was that you had the Lion's Corner Houses, of course. Yeah, of course. Very, very important. And you had Wimpy a bit later, okay, but that was different. And you had the pubs. Then you had the other end.

35:19You had the very expensive hotels, which did French food. Soho, the beginnings of an Italian movement, I suppose around about the 40s and 50s. You know, you had that great spaghetti tree, this fantastic book about all these different Italians who came in and did various restaurants. But it was still French for all the roost. Yeah, yeah. But there was no such thing as Michelin stars at this point. Absolutely not. No, no, no, no, no. Were there critics? Were there... There was a rather wonderful critic, and I can't remember for the life of his name, he was Colonel Wilfred so-and-so of the 42nd Bengal Lancers.

35:53and he would go around and write these very... Skinner's horse. Yeah, exactly. And he would write very trenchant reviews of places. And, of course, there was, you know, Viraswami. Yeah. Because the first wave of, you know, immigration from the subcontinent actually came, not just at partition, but before that, you know. And, of course, there was a small Indian community, as there was a small Jewish community, Turkish community in London. you know way way before you think of partition and the rest of it um and of course some of those relics of the raj would bring back their men servants and their you know their man servants um so we also had a slight indian tradition but yes it was french food french food you either ate posh french food clubby english food or it was the pub the lions and presumably that's those interwar years and then after probably i guess rationing finished in the 50s people were like well we've now we there's space to create restaurants as we know them today yes but still you'd have conran i suppose 50s 60s doing bistros and chicken bricks and the king's road started kicking off and you'd have um it wasn't comilario but it was before that that was sort of um those two italian restaurants down in world's end that became very trendy um but there still wasn't it It was still, you know, London was known for being good at the high end and good at the low end, but nothing in the middle.

37:23Yeah. And then I think after rationing, I think people would come in from America and just be a port, even in the hotels, in the best hotels, Brown Windsor Soup. Because the hotels had slightly different rules for rationing. You could go in there and eat slightly better. But still, it was a fairly glum, grim place. I speak to my parents about it. My father, London in the 50s. you know even the club food you weren't expected we had this hangover from the victorians that to to enjoy food to see sensuality in food to see pleasure in something as as base as food was seen as not right now the victorians of course were great hypocrites you know behind closed doors god knows what went on but in public it was all about you know covering up the table legs of you know yeah yeah yeah impropriety exactly and i think there was still that hangover certainly among the majority of the upper middle classes and upper classes that food, you know, it was a foreign thing to enjoy food.

38:20And God forbid you were like the French, you know, they were their sources and they would happily eat it. But and the really enlightened aristocrats would have the French chefs. Yeah. But the most the majority of the sort of work would like would be eating there. It would be roast on a Sunday, Rissoles on a Monday, Shepherd's Park on a Tuesday. day um you know this and and it was my great grandfather was a food writer called p morton shand and he railed and he went to go and live in france he wasn't the greatest father to my grandfather but he's a fantastically outspoken writer beautiful and a great rhyme writer as well and and also he he was a you know a great uh he was betcha was his sort of uh disciple he was a massive fan of modernism you know the bauhaus movement and all the rest of it then of of course, died hating modernism, saying it had gone too far.

39:07And it was all awful. And he started the architectural review. So it was this polymath of the thing. But he moaned about the roast and it was the death of British cuisine because it would just be recycled all week, you know, and just got the same thing every single day. So there was still very much. And rationing, we were on our knees after the war. Rationing finished in 55. Well, one of the things that weren't on rationing was game. Game, of course. So if you had estates, that was fine. Yeah. And if you lived in the country and you had a gun, you had your rabbits. So in the country, you did a lot better.

39:41Fish and chips were never on rationing. Right. And they got us through, I think, a lot of the time. But it was a pretty dreary place to eat. And if you think of Raymond Poskett, who started off with the bad food guy, because he was so appalled at the country house hotels and the regional restaurants with the same brown ones of soup. And then you get a bit. Tell me about him. He was a sort of a pioneer, Raymond Posker He was a man who started the good food guide Right And he would go around the country Studiously with his notebook Jotting down places And it was this revolution At the end of the 50s, beginning of the 60s It was Joyce Molineux at the Carved Angel It was George Perry Smith at Hole in the Wall in Bath It was Francis Coulson at Charro Bay in Cumbria These were people who'd been to France Who'd read Elizabeth David who thought this is not on in the 50s and beginning of the 60s.

40:32We should not be eating like this. And they began a process of which you can see to this day the likes of Simon Hockinson, Alistair Little, Roley Lee, Nico, the Rue brothers. Again, it was all French. Yes, of course, because Le Gavage was one of the big, very important and recently closed. Recently closed, I think Michel Junior just said it wasn't viable, which is very sad. And it was, the food was, I mean, Albert did the gavroche, Michel had the water side. And this was before Marco, before Gordon. These were, and of course it started, Albert started, or was it Michel, as Sir Peter Kaslitz's chef.

41:21So once again, it was still very much the vestiges of all the great chefs still worked for the rich and the aristocracy and he put the money up or some of the money up to start the gavroche but interesting with the gavroche is that despite the fact that it was you know the french arriving making a big impact on the british restaurant food scene etc it was still and certainly where it wasn't up a brook street if you walk past it you wouldn't notice yeah and in a way that for example if you open a restaurant today you want it to make a bit of noise this was almost again in that clubway the chefs even albert was the chefs were behind closed doors in this noisy clanking steaming hell-like atmosphere and of course front of house were the ones you'd open that once those those two sort of um doors had opened and it was all silent and perfect and silvano the greatest maitre d i think of all time apart from jesus is the next generation um hazel's adorno but or jesus we always yeah yeah um from le caprice from le caprice and just you know one of the greats but silvano was one of the great maitre d's in the days you could smoke in restaurants you know if someone picked up a cigarette and the waiter wasn't over to light it within a second if the glass was anything less than full and it'll be smooth but he'd be stamping on the foot of the waiter saying now we know that we go and fill these up yes yes but But they were a fantastic team.

42:50And you think of, I suppose, there were all these things like the White Elephant. And then you had the clubs, of course, didn't you? The sort of 20s, 30s, 40s clubs. But it still was not a restaurant town, London, at all. It wasn't particularly democratic. It wasn't a place where it was good food for all. Then, you know, even the 70s, you know, despite, you know, the swinging 60s and Carnaby Street, I think the quality of food wasn't brilliant. Well, London was, I mean, Britain was pretty poor in the 70s. Absolutely, yeah. And three-day working weeks. And the strikes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know.

43:25Which, oddly enough, at the same time, Mark Burley opening up places at Harry's Bar and stuff like that, that was, again, the sort of, which I've heard a great story about the Queen Mum going to Harry's Bar at one point, but she was around the back. And then when she was coming out, everyone saw her and everyone just sort of stopped and stood up as she was leaving, which I thought was rather much less. Mark Burley's a figure, because we're now moving into the Mark Burley era, if we talk about the 70s. Annabelle's had far better food than it should have had. My father used to say that it was, I mean, there's obviously that famous chocolate mousse.

43:56But the food, he was such a perfectionist. Right down, watching, whether it was the quality of the butter. He was a proper, I always forget, there's four different stages, gourmet, gourmand, but he was the top. He would disappear off. Obviously, the great restaurants the world like, Especially on the Malfi Coast My two favourite restaurants on earth Los Colio and Adolfo Now they are by no standard Silver service But you'll have the likes of Mark Burley would have been going there Maria Grazi was his favourite actually A bit further down the coast But he transformed clubs But only for the people who could become Members of his club And you still had to wear ties And the rest of it But Mark's Club, going back to the first time, they did a dish there, which was a boiled egg.

44:46And they'd hollow it out. So they'd hollow out a boiled egg, scramble the egg, beautifully, lots of butter, put it back in. So it'd be half scrambled eggs, half caviar. And we weren't allowed to obviously have that because, you know, when we were 12, 13, 14, because even by the standards of, you know, caviar was relatively cheap. It was extortion. Of course, you didn't see the prices if you were the guest. Yes. But for us, you know, with the staff, it was just the most amazing place. And Harry's bar was the same. And these were, because he was such a perfectionist, the food was just incredible.

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46:27The details are in the podcast episode description box. Was there an issue there with anyone who wanted to open up a restaurant at that time they were now competing because before they were competing against you know liver and bacon yeah where so you know if a if a wealthy man or or ariso or whatever was in london in central london may fest and james's want a banker even wanted to go to eat somewhere they could choose a club or they could if they want to do something nicer they could choose a restaurant by this point and the restaurants were like well we're competing against um liver and bacon we're You don't have a problem with that.

47:04Along comes Mark. And suddenly the game, the antis is put up because there was that sort of... Well, the Italian, obviously we've always, we've had Italians since, you know, starting in Soho and moving out from Soho to Chelsea. There's always been Italian, but the Italians, like the Indians, the Chinese, like all the great nations, culinary nations are regularly adapting the food. So if you think of curry houses, for example, they're about as Indian as I am. you know the madras is named after it's just another thing you know they're the indians actually mainly bangladeshi cooks funnily enough who started the curry as would adapt to our taste so they call i mean vindaloo is a going dish with pork vindaloo wine and garlic and it was it's quite spicy you know it's got a lot of vinegar in it and it's got a lot but it's but vindaloo you know it's completely different it's made for our tastes you know the korma the blah the blah these are curries created for the english palate and just as wonderful for it you know i i love a curry as much as I love regional Indian food, but very different things.

48:05But I think with, you know, Mark Burley, it is going to start, you know, when you go to Harry's Bar and eat, you know, the best, whatever it is, truffle risotto or the Carpaccio, sitting in a room which is utterly beautiful with waiters all in white and, you know, drinking your Bellini. And I think that is going to, you know, start filtering through And when I was young in the 80s, my grandma, those were the days, my grandmother used to have a permanent suite in Claridge's because it was so much easier, darling. I didn't do anything. I think my great-grandmother had one as well. So it was very much a family hotel.

48:47We used to go into the dining room to go and have dinner with my grandmother, who was the most wonderful person, very laid back. But we'd have to sort of dress up, and there'd still be a string quartet, and we'd have our spaghetti bolognese underneath the cloche. Yeah, yeah. And the Coca-Cola would always come in those big heavy glasses. But we all grew up in restaurants like La Fontana, Mimo de Ischia. Mimo de Ischia was, Ischia, my parents, my grandparents used to go on holiday, take my aunt and uncle and mother there in the 50s and 60s. And it was this wonderful island next to Capri. And I think, and I haven't been back for years, but Mimo came from there, once tried to get into my mother and aunt's room in the middle of the night.

49:24And my grandfather sort of bopped him with his umbrella. only my grandfather bring an umbrella to to to the south of italy but we all grew up going to ischia for two weeks so we had english food on the one hand and italian southern italian food we knew very very well we thought that was italian food because it was the tomatoes and the fish and and so mimo ischia was this incredible west i think he opened about 72 and he had pictures over the wall of him and Stallone or him and, you know, sort of Tom Jones. And he, Remo's still alive, this fantastic character. He's retired back to Iskian now. Big, bushy chest and a big medallion and silk shirts, black silk shirts, open to the nave.

50:09And all the movie stars and Nisman Nelly and they'd all come in and he'd have huge bowls of, you know, pasta, amazing ribs, funnily enough. And Roger Moore was there every night. Michael Caine was there the whole time. that whole bunch of the, what are they called the German Street orphans? Dougie Haywood, Michael Caine, Terrence Stamp. You know, they were all East End boys, weren't they? Offen at Tramp. Johnny Gold. They were all there. So that was a real sceny place. And you think of La Familia, you think of... La Familia's still around, isn't it? La Familia's still around. I still love La Familia.

50:44The one in Beach and Place with Mara, San Lorenzo. Yeah. So the Italians were very much a scene as well. of the 70s and 80s. It was all... Were the Italians ever... Did they ever do sort of, I mean, for want of a better phrase, luxury restaurants? Were they at the top end or were they always that kind of cosy enclave for people who wanted to just go have something really delicious? They were English-Italian on the whole because you wouldn't... Harry's Bar was probably... The only, yeah, great, yeah, yeah. The very best. But there would always be avocado and prawns on the menu, you know. And La Fontana, there was a huge area, Eby Street, round Pimlico.

51:23And La Fontana was amazing. It was all sort of red velvet in there. And the food was fairly average most of the year until truffle season came in. And then he would make the most amazing, you know, sort of truffle pasta, you know, sort of truffle everything on Carpaccio. It had a very pretty daughter. But it was a real place you'd go and have spaghetti bolognese. Of course, spaghetti bolognese is the most English dish anyway. Northern Italians are always appalled by spaghetti with a ragu sauce, you know, because it doesn't stick on the sauce. it must be tagliatelle it should never be spaghetti but you could get spaghetti bolognese and you could get fish in white sauce so no they were very much English, Frenchy, Italian places there would be a couple of regional specialities to remind the owner of where he came from of course they probably wouldn't eat that at all being Italian so we grew up in Italian restaurants and I think French restaurants were around a lot as well but I always was jealous of my friends who, I didn't eat Indian food until I was 13 and Chinese until I was 13.

52:23Because growing up in Wiltshire, we didn't really have, we didn't go out to restaurants in those days in the country. And if you went to London, you went to either Greens or to an Italian restaurant. Yeah. So, yeah. A lot of the restaurants we've spoken about, there's that sense of indulgence, you know, vast quantities of food, like comfort. But today what's very popular, the way restaurants are being set up is things like tasting menus and stuff like that. Small plates. Yes, well, how do you feel about that? Wow. And also, how do you feel about it, but also why is that a thing? Well, it all started when seven great chefs in about 72, 73, the Trois-Guerr brothers, Ferdinand Point, started something along with Gault Millieu.

53:09They did Le Cuisine Nouvelle, which everyone looks back, it's all about putting a bit of kiwi on a square plate. No, that was the bastardised version by the time it got over to here. What it really was, it was a revolutionary way of cooking. Let's take the butter out of the sauces. Let's make everything fresh, seasonal, light. Let the flavours of the ingredients speak for themselves rather than being battered, well, not literally battered, rather than being, you know, battered in those very heavy base Escoffier sauces, you know, whatever it might be. And there was always reductions in stocks. And this was about purifying it, letting the flavours speak for themselves.

53:42and hugely important for European gastronomy. So out of that, you know, there's legends. And, of course, the Rue brothers came over, and they were still doing quite – they were influenced by Nouveau-Cassin. And then, of course, what happens, all those chefs who work for the likes of Pierre Kaufman or the Rue brothers or Nico, they started – and now we're in the 80s, the thrusting 80s. There's lots of money. imagine the montage with an 80s song and everyone on big bricks with red braces on, snorting drinking in the city that's what it was, champagne all round and having a nice time and that's when those restaurants, Harvey's Marco Pierre White one of the great chefs of all time despite having never been to France he read The Great Chefs of France, he read Roger Verger he read Ferdinand Poir the Trois Gras and he created these dishes that, you know, and under him you had you know gordon and stevie terry and you know all these people who worked did it help that chefs were now becoming sort of sex symbols i mean you think about angeli bourdain as well well this way before but what it was marco and bob carlos clark but marco but marco pia was shot by like bob carlos clark in like a movie star and he was this beautiful sort of completely sort of cadaverous chain-smoking baron-esque figure and this is when the chef came from the dark depths of the kitchen and the chef became and no longer that sort of you know big mustachioed sort of thing was gone big fella and now it was this sort of almost a bit like jeff buckley kind of long hair and just sort of yeah suddenly this was cooking was called everyone wanted to be a chef yeah and yeah and it all exploded and you know marco was kicking people out of the restaurant for ketchup and yeah and you know gordon came out of that and that whole um diaspora diaspora that came out of Harvey's and Nico and the Rue brothers.

55:42And that changed the way London and Britain ate at the top end forever. But equally importantly, so this was still tasting menus. And I'll go into the tyranny of the tasting menu in a second. But this was, you know, this was the top thing. Suddenly London's alive. London's getting great. The food, all these amazing restaurants. Michelin, you know, even though I think the Waterside had three and Gavroche had three. But 87, an amazing thing happened Where there was still the high end And the pubs and the taverns And the rest of it Five restaurants, Kensington Place opened The River Cafe opened I think that Simon Hopkinson Was still at Hilaire But I think he might have gone to Bibendum Just around that point And Alice Little opened in Soho And these were all university educated people Stop it They weren't traditionally It was very much a working class Chefs World was a working class thing You know, it was these were university educated, middle class chefs who thought, why, you know, they looked at the brasseries of France and stuff.

56:43So why can't why can't food be a decent price, be non scary, be in a room buzzing, not sort of very grand. Kelsen Place was iconic, really. It was. Feels like Jeremy King's sort of era as well. It was. Jeremy was a little. It's similar philosophy. Exactly the same philosophy. And Jeremy, of course, at the same time, he with Chris. Actually, no, because that was about 85 actually earlier. So actually, I'm not forgetting Jeremy is crazy. Because Langham's and stuff was a brasserie, was all about. We've forgotten about Langham's at all. Peter Langham, the mad, great, great drunk, of which all the movie stars, because Michael Caine was a partner in that.

57:17So that was actually, I forgot that in talking about the cool restaurants, because that was a brasserie. That wasn't posh food. That was, and it had every movie star in the world coming out. Because presumably word was now, you know, this is a time of broader press reach. and so word was getting out to America, to other nations, that ultimately Lutton was a great place to go. Well, it was. And if you think of when the great Richard Young was a paparazzi and all those photographs he was taking, now, of course, he's the grand old man, not that old, but the grand man of photography. But he was a proper rough and tumble pap.

57:48I mean, he's telling me about the times that he was at Freddie Mercury's parties in Ken Roof Gardens. Golly gosh. And he's seen everything, which I think of Dave Bennett as well and all that lot. But that was, yeah, of course, that was langland's is very important river cafe was hugely important and it started obviously as as you know richard rogers ruthie richard rogers his wife uh got rose gray who'd cooked before and she came in and ruthie learned you know became an incredible cook herself but this started off as a small canteen for you know the richard rogers associates architects on in hammersmith a place where there was nothing you know yeah for the for the beau monde in hammersmith um alice little and Soho but what the point of all of them were doing was unlike Langans which yes there was decent food and it was a browser yes this was taking food very seriously so it was if you're going to do Italian we're going to get the best ingredients in the world.

58:41Rody Lee obviously had trained at Le Pulpo and the Gavroche a bit on Derue so he was French trained. Alice Little was bringing keep it simple you know doing the best you know what Italian the great Italian food is but also influences from all over the world and doing that. And Simon Hopkins is just one of the great French chefs of all time. You know, just incredible. Bibendum, but it was relaxed. You didn't have to wear a suit. You could go in and eat classic French dishes or bourgeois French dishes. Terence Conran, again, another great figure, of course, we've talked about a little bit. But suddenly, 87, London was, you know, you think of 192 coming into the 90s and you think of Conran doing mezzo and quaglinos and the food was never very good at those places, but the spectacle was fantastic.

59:27Then, of course, we came into the era of Heston, the fat duck, which started off as a brasserie, a la carte, then moved, Heston being the genius he was, Ferran Adria at El Bulli, which again was in a finca, but yet you had 55 courses, and they all hate the term now of molecular astronomy, which it was basically postmodern food. You know, what is food? Why do we, what is the plate edible? Is the menu edible? And some of it at the time was really interesting Heston was and is a genius And he understood the sense of fun, of nostalgia And I never mind, I still don't mind now Jockey Petri, his old head chef is back at the duck Now I'm doing great things And Heston's back there But we used to call it, my ex-wife and I The tyranny of the tasting menu You'd go in, it'd be like as cold as a mausolean and you'd sit down and it was like going to a country house hotel in the 80s and 90s you know and the sommelier would appear with a bible that thick of wine that sort of looked down his nose somewhat at you and if you didn't order the latash or or or the cheval blanc you know you'd be it was always you know the second cheapest bottle which they knew full well they put some absolute crap on it and then it'd be here's something from the chef and you know by about course 24 you'd hit the wall all pleasure has gone from eating they explain and still do explain every course so you can't have a conversation and my my ex-wife called them clink clink restaurants because all you'd hear was a sort of clink clink of you know metal on porcelain and a bit of glass and everyone really scared um and it was like it was a bit like that royal hospital road was a bit different i always thought the food at royal hospital people forget that gordon ramsay was an incredibly and is a very very good chef i agree and a very good trainer of chefs you think of angela hartnett one of the great chefs really not her restaurant to put um the royal opera house i've heard it's brilliant it's really good i love angela she's she's not just a lovely person and she's she was I'm not a pioneer or anything, but she was.

1:01:38You wouldn't have, you know, the women that have come out of Gordon's Kitchen, Claire Smith, another fantastic chef. Again, everything in the 2000s suddenly was fine dining, but there'd be no tablecloths. You could wear what you wanted, you know. It was, again, you think of the Lebre, which is Brettie Graham, who trained under another great person, Phil Howard at the Square. That was another legendary industry. Phil Howard was amazing. Amazing chef. Still is an amazing chef. Great-looking guy as well. Oh, and just everyone loved working for him. Gentle. Kind. Highly intelligent. Yeah. And just, and you think, Brett Graham came out of the square.

1:02:16A great friend of mine called Scotty Pickett in Australia who has a lot of restaurants over there. That was a very good training ground for... Now, were the restaurants at this point catering for the fact that actually the new money in London was coming from places like the UAE or, you know, Russia or, you know, London was now, it was no longer an English palate like we were talking about with the curries before we're not talking about English palates anymore for London restaurants if you're talking about people coming in from the UAE and Russia a whole new brand of restaurants a whole new group of restaurants started Novikov places that perhaps Sexy Fish now we haven't even got on to the era of Richard Kering yet and whatever you say about Richard Kering he's a genius and I realised I love the Caprice.

1:03:06That was our restaurant we grew up in. Jeremy and Chris, when he's working together, are the kings. Yes. Quite literally. Yeah. I love Sheiky's. I love, I mean, the Ivy at its peak. And again, we're talking when I was working in Soho in the mid-90s. It was, you know, Caprice, as you know, was more art world, magazine world, royalty, photography, that sort of thing. ivy was theater yes showbiz yeah bit of film and you'd walk down the left-hand side and you'd see lloyd weber on his table you see ed victor and ed victor had tables over the great literary agent he had tables the whole place and it was hierarchy you never want it was all right being on the big table down below the corner one but if you were right at the back that was social siberia you know you wanted those tables it's that story from the ivy when um a girl was raised about the fact that he said everyone has a Charles Finch story.

1:04:03And I say this because I used to work for Charles Finch. I was offered a job by Charles Finch, lost, left my job back and think this is for you, Charles. And then I got there and he said, I didn't have a job. I was like, thanks, I had a bunch. Well, this is even better, I think, because a girl, Charles goes, hi, I'm Charles Finch, I'm a big fan. And he goes, Charles, we've met many times before. And he goes, oh, yes, of course, yes, sorry. I'm just thinking that maybe, you know, I'm an agent and I should be your agent. and he goes, Charles, you are my agent. I mean, again, Adrian, one of the greats, but it was, again, at the Caprice, you wanted the corner table between the two windows of which Princess Diana, Geoffrey Archer.

1:04:46It was nice. David Lindy, Nicholas Coleridge, Geordie Gregg, they would all have that one. And you didn't want to be towards the back unless you were having a fling and wanted to be discreet. But it was a great double bluff. Why would you go to the Caprice if you're having an affair? Well, because you'd say, well, I wouldn't go to the Caprice That'd be idiotic, everyone's there But it was such a scene The Caprice in the 90s And it was open until 12 And Mark Hicks was cooking there And same with Sheiky's That was after-hours theatre crowd Maggie Smith Robert Stevens Coming in So these were places which were about The atmosphere and the service as much as the food And they were incredible Caring was you know scots when it was open it was jeremy king um mark hicks now on mount street now on mount street and it again it was another you know with hicksy doing the food very very beautiful fish and my friend matt hobbs was running the front of house and jeremy was doing and it was a great at that point rich caring bought caprice holdings and actually you know sexy fish and bacchanalia and other places like Amazonica and Amazonica, they're catering for not catering for us.

1:06:00I think they're catering for the Novikov crowd. They're catering for a Novikov crowd and so be it. Without it sort of being as dodgy. There's that crowd. If you want caviar and everything, king crab legs, you know, lavish, expensive, you know, so be it. It's a good market to be appealing to. It's a good market. It's a big enough city. It's a reliable spending market. And you look at the ivy and the ivy grill and how he's spread it across. I have, you know, it is a thing. It is what it is. But I have nothing but respect for how he's completely transformed that mid-market. Because I loved 34. 34 is great.

1:06:32Yeah, yeah, yeah. Superb. It's a great steakhouse. Yes, exactly. I agree. And would be my one of choice, except for maybe Santa Maria del Sur on Queenstown Road. I don't know if you've been to that one. Is that steakhouse? Yeah, the Argentinian one. It's absolutely amazing. I love Cups. I love Cups because I think that's fantastic. And I do like Hawks more. Yeah. But yes, we've got to the 90s, okay? So you've got this explosion of democratic restaurants. You've also got Wagamama coming in, Alan Yao, this amazing figure. He, you know, he's doing noodles. Now, we didn't know much about noodles. Suddenly he's making noodles not scary.

1:07:03Noodles and katsu chicken. And suddenly it's a place you can take the kids and it's cheap. Or nowhere near enough. What was the soupies, the Japanese soups? There was, that was, I mean, that was... Ramen. I'm thinking of ramen. The ramen explosion came a bit later, like 2010, I think, with the tonkotsus and maybe 2010. it was always there. You could always find ramen, you know, in sort of parts of, you know, small Japanese restaurants. But it wasn't a big thing. But that, you know, the 2000s, it was all blowing up and food, Jamie Oliver and suddenly food was cool. And, you know, Two Fat Ladies and food was massive on the tellies and cookbooks.

1:07:43And another person we always forget about, Gary Rhodes, was a really important figure in British gastronomy. I'd like to also throw in Gavin Rankin just because, not only because of, and we can go on for hours without Gavin, but because of his influence, having worked with, he was like the first to work with the Soviet Union, with Caveo Caspia. And then on to Burley. Then on to Burley, and then went back to the same site where Caveo Caspia was to open Bellamy's. Now, Bellamy's is like, Bellamy's, Lepatron Mange's EC word. Yeah. That's very, very, every day. Yeah, every day. And there's something about the Franglais menu, and there's something about how terrifying, terrified and he won't mind me saying this of stefan the wonderful chef yes uh not terrified they have a healthy respect for each other he goes up to the little peephole in the door and he takes off his glasses and looks through and then he goes and stefan runs the kitchen and then the patron runs everything else i think i've been there a hundred times i still never met him i did a piece years ago stefan i love his cooking so i wish i wish they would do a fauna again but it was apparently only me and rody lee with any people ever ate um but i just love it my parents love it because it's quiet my they don't like noisy restaurants and my mother's a great eater out my father's a great eater out and it's sort of like greens was as you always bump into five people you know and it's the only restaurant in the world that queen elizabeth ii ate in more than once yeah and she downstairs and of course gavin for my last book i was trying to forget and gavin's far too discreet he's useless and he's really you know and he can hold his drink as well so you can't you know have a long lunch and try and ask he's incredibly discreet yeah but also he's watching him and luigi are watching all the time and it was a bit like what what jeremy king was the master of of not putting wives next to mistresses next to business right you know what i mean there was a real because and i think jeremy's still jeremy king still looks at all the i mean the park is my favorite at the moment yeah because it's got that american feel but the children love it because they can have everything you can take my dog in at lunch yeah on a wednesday thursday you pretty much know everyone it's very much a west london but not in a sceny wanky way yeah really wonderful the service is you know out of this world um i just and you're treated exactly the same if you're giles coroner adrian gill or david beckham as if you're someone who's just come in and saved up for for three weeks to come that is hugely important really really important He did that very well at the Woolsey.

1:10:10I remember the Woolsey, you know, 20 quid steak and chips. Well, exactly. And I've never been back to the Woolsey since he's left. It kills me because out of loyalty, you just don't do it. No, I agree. It might be fine, I'm sure. But the Woolsey was the cafe. One of my favourite things that he did at the Woolsey was the napkin. If you were wearing a navy blue suit, you would be brought a black napkin because a white napkin, if it went to a navy blue suit, would just leave lots of white lint on your suit. Isn't that so good? Have you heard at Simpsons that he's got the napkins all have a little hole in it so you can attach it?

1:10:45I'm not sure how that would work. Do you unbutton it? Well, it wouldn't. You wouldn't unbutton it. Where do you put your napkin on your collar? People always ask that. I follow Gavin. Gavin does it into the side. Yes, in a full. It's quite a statement wearing that. Dave Carr, the late, great Dave Carr, an art dealer who was a great trencherman. and um he used to just put it you know put it and spread it which is of course yeah i mean if i am a suit you don't want a white shirt covered in in stuff especially if yeah so i do i like just tucking it in using your hands and getting tucked in it's a so i guess to round the sort of things up obviously people talk often about how difficult it is to have a restaurant these days uh so how do you see the landscape um who do you think is doing it best and what do you think is the sort of rubric one should follow to you look at the restaurants it's incredibly hard everyone still imagines hospitality oh they own a restaurant they make a fortune they'd why they get pissed all day wine and dine it's a life of the restaurateur you know like and perhaps there was some truth that perhaps in the 70s maybe you know but government over the last 25 years have been absolutely useless the one thing they could do is cut that by 10 you know cut it to 10 if They got rid of that.

1:11:58Of course, this government, anti-pleasure. I mean, the last government were useless as well. Well, it was Rishi's fault. He put in the VAT on purchases and stuff. But then it suddenly, you know, just shit show. It came before. But it's tough. But it still shows that if you are successful and a good restaurateur, you can still pack it out. And it's incredibly hard work. I'm going for lunch at Bouchon Racine. Racine is Henry Harris's place. that used to be in Knightsbridge, the rates went too high, he went back to cooking at various places. You can't get a table there for 10 years. You know, love or money.

1:12:35The other great restaurateur who's come in the last five years is Martin, and he'll kill me for not getting... Martin, because I always pronounce his name wrong. Actually, even on Instagram, he's called Martin, can't pronounce his name. He used to run Soho House. London still is. Yeah. In the top five cities in the world, he had the most Michelin stars. So you have three of them are in Japan. you've got Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto. Yeah. And then you've got Paris and London. So London is still where people want to go to open up great restaurants. And Michelin are panicking slightly now and sort of doing tele programs to sort of try and keep their relevance because for a long time they would never dream of giving a Japanese, fine, a Chinese restaurant, a star, an Indian restaurant, a star.

1:13:19And you're going back to places like, you know, I think JKS were a fantastic restaurant. They do Jim Karner, Brigadiers. Trishner. Trishner. That's great. Trishner is terrific. Brilliant. And Jim Karner is consistent. It's got two stars now, but don't let that put you off. It is still one of the best restaurants. And it's ramped. You cannot get there for months. And is there a new one, the Ambassadors? Ambassadors Club. Is that part of the same group? They used to have bao that they've sold off. They have a stake in Legado in Nieves, Maragans restaurants. But Martin, and I'm just reading this one to me, But it's Martin Kuzmaski, who used to work at Sewer House.

1:13:56And he's opened the Dover and then the Dover counter. The Dover is the sexiest restaurant I've been to for years. Really? It looks like being in a cigar box. He has a sound system that's probably worth more than the building, only playing vinyl, sort of rare grooves. The lighting is beautifully done, like Jeremy King. Like all great restaurants, understand lighting is as important as food, as service, and it's sexy. and the cocktails are immaculate. So when you have a martini, just like at Ben Willman's Bar in the Carlisle in New York, they bring it and there's always enough for another half. They put it in an ice bucket by the side.

1:14:31It's though, if you're having a martini and you're too busy gossiping, they will pour every, after five minutes, once your freezing glass has got warm, they get another freezing glass out. It's details like that. And he just opened the Dovan counter, which is next door, much more laid back. I described it as sort of basically upmarket room service food. It's burgers. It's salads And it's this atmosphere And it shows There is a demand If you get it right But the middle market is suffering massively You can't get away with mediocrity now Eating out is expensive So people have to realise Restaurateurs, which they do There are a lot of people There's a certain part of London Who don't look at bills The rich are very rich in London but the vast majority of people watching the pennies and eating out is very very expensive so you're looking for value yeah um and therefore the set menu the 25 quid set menu uh wherever it may be racine or you know that and and a glass of house white that's you've got to treat your punters with respect i think that's what all the great restaurateurs know is that look after all of your customers don't just look after the the famous ones who expect a freebie or the you know It's about looking after the people who come time after time after time.

1:15:50They pay the service charge. They pay the rates. You know, this is what keeps London. London is one of the most expensive cities in the world. There's no doubt about that. I think New York's a bit more expensive, actually, weirdly, at the moment. It's more expensive than Tokyo. Paris is quite expensive. But it is extortionally expensive to get around, to buy, to do anything. You know, you go to the West End and it's, you know, go and buy a book and have a bit of lunch. It's 100 quid. Yeah, yeah. And you're not even having a drink. That's why I said it was a hardback, by the way. rather than paperback.

1:16:19But yes, so I think that the great restaurants understand that the most important person of all, obviously, is the customer. You look after the customer. You don't take the piss. You serve good food at a decent price in a restaurant that you want to linger in because, of course, atmosphere is everything. Well, look, I've really enjoyed this. So I suggest maybe we do part two at some point down the line and talk about all those other places, you know, because ultimately everybody loves a tip. Well, they do. And all those cheap places. I mean, Taiwan and Hammersmith. And you can go to Southall and you can go to New Morden and you can go to...

1:16:49That's when London gets... It's a completely different thing. We're talking about London as London, but when you get into London as 100 different nationalities, cultures coming together, that's what makes me very proud to be a Londoner too. Immigration, fantastic. It's what makes London this amazing eating city. And it's not all about the top end. It's about everything. It's a great place to eat. I remain Tom Chamberlain, and this has been The Luxury Dispatch, the podcast that explores the people, places and passions that shape the world of luxury. My thanks to Tom Parker Bowles for guiding us through the extraordinary variety and energy of London's dining scene and for reminding us that some of life's greatest pleasures are still found around the table.

1:17:30If you've enjoyed today's episode, please do like, subscribe and leave a comment. We read every one. Tell us your favourite London restaurants, the dishes you keep going back to or the worlds of luxury you would like us to explore next. thank you for listening and happy dressing and dining

1:18:12Thank you.

1:18:42Thank you.