Restaurants

There’s a tray of scotch eggs and a man pointing at one of them. ‘You know what this is?’ he asks. I nod; recognisably it is a traditional British savoury snack. But that isn’t all he is seeing on the tray. ‘This is a reaction against celebrity culture. This is about real things.’

I eye one of the eggs. It looks very real, so real that I want to eat it right now.

‘Celebrity,’ he continues. ‘What was that all that about? Feature continues

Given that the man talking is Oliver Peyton, the serial restaurateur perhaps most strongly associated with the excesses of 1990s celebrity eating and drinking – he was the man behind the now-defunct Atlantic Bar and Grill – you’d think he’d know, but it seems time has dimmed his memory. Standing now in a small bakery beneath Great Portland Street in the basement of Mash (itself a remnant of those 1990s days he wishes to distance himself from), Peyton is stoutly championing the sort of food that is unlikely to pass a supermodel’s lips. No more froufrou titbits, from now on we will be eating ‘the honest stuff that this country does so well’. Honest stuff like the sausage rolls, scotch eggs, pork pies and cakes the bakery supplies to Peyton and Byrne, the top end 1930s-style shop he has opened up in the old flower stall in Heal’s; to his new restaurant at The Wallace Collection; and to his well-regarded National Dining Rooms.

Peyton (left) and Pizey (centre) with our man

As Peyton stalks the flour-dusted floor contemplating a new honesty and authenticity in London food, Roger Pizey, the good-humoured Mancunian master baker whose sweat is making it all possible, emerges with a tray of pork pies.

‘Try that,’ says Roger, passing an inch-thick slice of pie, oozing with the perfect amount of clear but slightly brown jelly squeezed between the shortcrust and the neat filling, ‘A mixture of shoulder and bacon cuts.’ There is a dessertspoonful of English mustard alongside it. The combination is breathtaking and the scotch egg that swiftly follows isn’t bad either. It has hardly any jacket, in fact the white of the egg shows through in places. But what jacket there is contains clearly discernable strands of meat and is coated in very small breadcrumbs. Inside all this is a pale-yolked, hard-boiled egg.