Restaurants

The 1960s
The ’60s was a time of culinary as well as social change in London. Cookery writer Elizabeth David was spreading the word about good seasonal ingredients and simple French regional cooking, but London’s French restaurants remained aloof, serving heavy wines and multiple courses of heavy food with cloying sauces. Customers began flocking to less expensive Italian trattorias in Soho instead. Raffia-covered Chianti bottles appeared under table lamps across the capital as the middle classes began experimenting with wines (previously, only toffs or oenophiles drank vino). Pizza Express opened on Wardour Street in 1965. It was the first pizzeria to bring pizza to the masses and, thankfully, pollo surprise wasn’t on the menu. Time Out’s coverage of eating out catered well for its readers at the time – the emphasis was on low prices. The first restaurant ‘reviews’ were merely one-liners, as follows.
Time Out said, in 1968: ‘The Macrobiotic Restaurant in Westbourne Terrace. Brown rice with béchamel sauce, 2/-.’ Feature continues

The 1970s
By 1973, Time Out recognised the need to review smarter restaurants – a new category of review emerged, called ‘Flash ones’. You could eat delights such as chicken Kiev, mushroom vol-au-vent and Black Forest gâteau. Fanny Cradock was on telly: the era of home entertaining took off. The Sunday supplements were filled with adverts for fondue sets and hostess trolleys; Mike Leigh’s TV play ‘Abigail’s Party’ was broadcast. The growth of wine bars and brasseries marked a big shift towards more casual dining – you could leave the tie or make-up at home, and eat much lighter meals. American-style themed bar/restaurants took off, pioneered by the late Bob Payton. His Chicago Rib Shack name and concept was revived after nearly a decade’s closure by new owners in 2008 – to less than enthusiastic reviews. Indian restaurants blossomed.
Time Out said, in 1978: ‘[The Khyber in Westbourne Grove] is one of a new breed of Indian restaurants, tastefully decorated with not a trace of flock wallpaper.’

The 1980s
The ’80s saw London’s restaurants go through a massive change for the better. In 1981, Anglo-French L‘Escargot opened, and immediately became the film and media hangout. It sparked off a trend in Soho, as the red-braced idiots getting richer in the Thatcher years (precursors to the present media brigade) began splashing their money around. There was a tricky period around 1982, when some smart London restaurants grasped at nouvelle cuisine in a short-lived attempt to charge exorbitant prices for a white plate garnished with slivers of kiwi fruit. Fortunately, nouvelle cuisine never really caught on.

Time Out picked up on the growing interest Londoners were showing in eating out with the publication in 1983 of the first ‘Time Out Guide to Eating Out in London’, costing £1.75 and listing 1,000 ‘dining, drinking and lunching places in town’. It was a success and became an annual publication, with the twenty-sixth edition published last week (I’ve been a reviewer, then eventually editor, on a staggering 18 of them). Some of the small team who worked on those early publications are still here as senior editors, ensuring a remarkable continuity and unparalleled expertise of the London scene, but in the intervening years we’ve also added many expert reviewers in cuisines ranging from regional Indian to Chinese, Italian to Japanese – plus a bevy of highly qualified drinks experts.

Alastair Little (the self-taught chef who was previously at supertrendy 192 in Notting Hill) opened his own place in Frith Street in 1985, using fresh, market-led British produce simply but expertly cooked, with Italian and other European flourishes. Soon, scores of restaurants were serving the style of dishes that came to be known as Modern British by the end of the decade. Little has since sold the restaurant that bears his name, but his influence lingers on.

Terence Conran’s Bibendum opened in 1987. The same year, The River Café appeared in Hammersmith, and against everyone’s expectations (because the location is miles from anywhere), did rather well. It reopens in early October following a kitchen fire in April. Marco Pierre White became a household name, following the opening of Harvey’s in 1987 and numerous articles about the ‘bad boy’ chef. Now, as a restaurateur, he seldom dons the apron himself.

At the other, lower end of the culinary spectrum, kebab culture became commonplace – Harry Enfield’s Stavros first appeared on the box in 1985. There was a steady resurgence of interest in real ales during the ’80s, with small breweries such as the Firkin pubs leading the way. Sandwich bars became more sophisticated: the first Pret A Manger opened in Victoria in 1986; there are now around 150 Prets, serving everything from falafel wraps to sushi.
Time Out said, in 1986: ‘[Alastair] Little is typical of the new chef-patron; he is entirely self-taught... and unusually for most chefs, university educated.’

The 1990s
Time Out held its first Eating & Drinking Awards in 1990, in recognition of the importance that restaurants played in London life. The formula for the awards remains the same today: all shortlisted places are visited anonymously by expert critics to pick the winners.The winner of 1990’s Best New Restaurant category was One Ninety Queen’s Gate, run by a dynamic young chef called Antony Worrall Thompson. The Ivy reopened in 1990, and remains one of the best-known restaurants in London. Quaglino’s opened in 1993 and sparked off a trend for vast restaurants seating hundreds. Wagamama started in 1992 and consolidated the growth of non-specific ‘Oriental’ food. Thai restaurants boomed. Oriental influence crossed over into the Modern British movement, which by now people were calling Modern European. Oliver Peyton became one of the capital’s movers and shakers with the Atlantic Bar, the first of many avant-garde bar-restaurants he created.

A great many exciting new chefs and legendary restaurants were first discovered by Time Out during this era, from the haute cuisine of Jean-Christophe Novelli to humbler, but no less extraordinary, establishments, such as Rasa in Stoke Newington. The Eagle pub in Farringdon reopened in 1991, during an economic recession; it was the inspiration for a score of bare-board gastropubs where the food was as important as the drink, and of course, Time Out was the first to report on it.

In 1998 I took over as editor of the ever-growing Time Out Food & Drink section, just in time to document the rise (and fall) of the Hoxton and Shoreditch bar scene. And I recruited more specialist writers to cover the bars, pubs, Asian restaurants, cafés and gastropubs opening up in town.

Gordon Ramsay had a spat with his employers and left to set up his own restaurant. The pressure of the job and Ramsay’s volatile personality was caught on film in the TV series ‘Boiling Point’, which brought Ramsay infamy – and then celebrity status.
Time Out said, in 1998 (of Hoxton Square Bar and Kitchen): ‘You only come here to see and be seen.’

The noughties
The upward trajectory continued with the opening of Alan Yau’s amazing Hakkasan (2001) and Zuma (2002). Gourmet Burger Kitchen started a trend when it opened in 2001, and The Wolseley – from the people who re-burnished The Ivy – became the place to be seen in 2003. The Islington branch of Ottolenghi opened in 2004, the same year as Skye Gyngell’s Petersham Nurseries started to draw attention. And the past four years have seen a string of equally luminescent openings, from little gems such as Arbutus or Vinoteca to the high-profile activities of Gordon Ramsay and his empire.

At Time Out we’ve been reporting on it all in our annual restaurant guide, our ‘Bars, Pubs & Clubs’ guide, our ‘Cheap Eats’ guide – and now online.
Time Out said, in 2001: ‘Few London restaurants can beat the thrill of descending the staircase at Hakkasan.’