Andrew Turvil

Food critic Andrew Turvil discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Described by The Independent as one of the UK’s ‘arbiters of taste’, Andrew Turvil is the former editor of The Good Food Guide, AA Restaurant Guide and Which? Pub Guide. As a freelance restaurant critic, writer, and editor, he has spent his career writing about pubs and restaurants, and, undeterred, bought a pub in 2015 and ran it for 10 years. Blood, Sweat & Asparagus Spears is his first book.

1. Prior to the 1990s, very few chefs were household names. Very few people could reel off a
   list of chefs, but by the end of the decade many were TV stars and known to millions – Gary
   Rhodes, Jamie Oliver et al. The era of the celebrity chef started in the 1990s with food and
   cooking moving into the mainstream of popular culture.
2. There was less emphasis on the ingredients used in restaurants prior to the 1990s and the consumption of organic food in the UK had barely got going. The 1990s saw the produce start to take centre stage, the breed of animal often referenced on menus, and an ever-increasing variety of ingredients appeared on supermarket shelves.
3. Fashionable restaurants of the past were revived in the 1990s and gained new leases of life –
   The Ivy, Quaglino’s, J. Sheekey, Quo Vadis – and huge new restaurants were opened by the
   like of Sir Terence Conran. The 1990s saw unprecedented development in the UK restaurant
   sector, particularly, but not exclusively, in London. The 1990s was a decade of empire
   building.
4. French had been the language of food in the UK for over a hundred years and although still
   deeply imbedded in British food culture, during the 1990s the English language finally started to gain ground in the fine dining sector. Prior to the 1990s ‘posh’ food meant French food, but modern British cuisine took hold through the decade and greater informality in society generally saw a shift away from the grand style of dining developed by Escoffier that had dominated for 100 years.
5. Asian food in the UK took a great leap forward during the 1990s, with the development of
   modern Indian food, casual Japanese dining, and a new fusion of East meets west cuisine.
   Finally, the varied cuisines of Asia became more visible and the humble curry house and
   Chinese takeaway were no longer the lone representatives of the multiple cuisines of Asia.
6. The 1990s saw a proliferation of new foodie terms: nose to tail, fusion, Pacific rim and
   molecular gastronomy. These new words and expressions show how the 1990s was a decade
   of change, innovation and experimentation.