Time Out at 40

See all Time Out's 40th birthday London heroes

Key turning point… London moment?
‘My first concert, Thin Lizzy at the Hammersmith Odeon in the 1970s. I remember giving £14 to a tout. It was a lot of money. Also Sham 69 at their height at the Roxy in Harlesden. I think punk and new wave had quite a big influence on me.’

How has the London scene changed during your career?
‘People still eat. I’ve had great success and I’ve had great failures. The problem we have in London is greedy landlords. I personally signed up to lots of rents which at the time seemed quite reasonable, but ten years on, they went from £75K to a million pounds. It’s colossal. But I still feel there is a lot of opportunity. The one thing I don’t like about London is the demise of the West End. As the city expanded outwards to Clerkenwell and Hoxton and Shoreditch, it’s lost that sort of edginess. I was at Notting Hill at ten o’clock in the morning, just watching people walking up and down the street and I was thinking how much it had changed as a place, it’s just completely different stratospherically – it’s now posh. Genuine posh. It’s no longer a mixed area. I miss that mix that was in the West End.’

What other changes have you noticed?
‘What's interesting is that people in Britain are now producing food. Five years ago there were very few people producing enough food for restaurants. Now you have farmers who have cottoned on to the fact that there is a nice niche market for rearing rare breeds or high quality asparagus. Any great food culture is based around the quality of the product, and London now is without doubt one of the greatest cities in the world.’ Feature continues

What’s the future of eating in London?
‘I do think it’s sad that we have so many foreign things on the high street. Pizza this, pizza that… the product is brought directly from Italy. It’s not British. It all comes frozen, then popped on to your plate. So I’m thinking some way to challenge it is to get something a bit more indigenous out there. Why it can’t be cheaper to produce nice food down the road than buying it from a factory in Italy? Not everything needs to be purely British, you can have other influences.’

Beyond restaurants, what else does the capital mean to you?
‘The other thing about London is the amount of arts culture that is here. It’s enormous, you’re spoiled for choice. The galleries are much more reactive to people’s needs. They are putting on shows that people are interested in.’

Are you happy?
‘I’ve become very proud of what I do. I find it hard to say, but I enjoy what I do and I’m proud of what I do and it’s very important to me. More than money.’

See all Time Out's 40th birthday London heroes