London

London soon became the main port into which all the heady spices of the Orient came, along with tea, coffee and chocolate from the Far East and The Americas. London has long been a dynamic centre of food fashion therefore it is no surprise that these imported foods made their mark on this great city with the emergence of places like Cinnamon Wharf. Our city could then pride itself on tea shops, inns and chocolate houses, and all this trading spawned great institutions such as the Stock Exchange and Gentleman’s clubs. These clubs had a massive affect on what was eaten in London as did the Livery Halls although many of these had been around for a lot longer. Local manufacturers also used the rich reservoir of flavourings available to create condiments that are still staples of the British table today, such as gentleman’s relish and HP sauce.

The city’s position as the World’s Trading Centre also made it increasingly multicultural, so Cockney pie and mash shops popped up with jellied eels stalls along with salt beef and bagel shops from the Jewish immigrants, which led us to the most British of institutions ‘the fish and chip shop’. Later Limehouse was to become one of the first “Chinatowns” in the West and Britain’s first Indian restaurant opened in Covent Garden.

London’s food scene has changed so much from the days when Elizabeth David first started to write about food. Back in 1982 when I started at the Dorchester Hotel, British food was in short supply and only a few places such as the “Ritz Hotel” and “Simpson’s in the Strand” were serving British fayre, interpreted by Swiss, French and German chefs rather than British. It was European chefs therefore that opened our eyes to real English regional food - something that came naturally to these countries’ heritage and way of life. Along with these small pockets of English food came the gold credit card, the yuppie and Cuisine Nouvelle or as some would call it ‘Cuisine Poser’. This set us back another

15 or 20 years but finally with the break-through of British chefs such as Marco Pierre White, Shaun Hill, Raymond Farthing, Philip Britten, Mark Hix, and of course me! We started to call our food “English” or “British”, even if the foundations were reliant on Europe; at least the produce was British! Now people want British seasonal food along with more traditional dishes.

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