The oral history of the golden age of London's most fashionable restaurants.

In October 1976, the London restaurant world was turned upside down when Michael Caine, celebrated chef Richard Shepherd and Irish entrepreneur Peter Langan opened Langan's, a celebrity hangout that would revolutionise the capital's dining scene. This soon became the most celebrated restaurant in the city, and helped turn London into an internationally recognised culinary hot spot. Inheriting its status from Mr. Chow and St. Lorenzo, Langan's was soon joined by Joe Allen, Le Caprice and L'Escargot, making London the most vibrant restaurant capital of the age.

London never looked back. In the five decades since, the city has become the global culinary petri dish, a multi-cultural hotbed of super chefs and gastronomic ingenuity, of monstrous egos and appalling kitchen behaviour, bad reviews and scabrous critics (AA Gill, Giles Coren and Michael Winner), dictatorial maitre ds, inter-restaurant feuding (Jeremy King v Richard Caring, Jamie Oliver v Marci Pierre White, Gordon Ramsey v Gino D'Acampo, Marcus Wareing and Mario Batali), ridiculous trends (everything from nouvelle cuisine and kimchi to tasting menus and wine pairings), scandals (Gordon Ramsey, Boris Becker, Jamie Oliver), difficult customers ("What do you mean I can't have Table 3?"), financial shenanigans, global media attention and more.

Details

ISBN13: 9780349000732
Format: Paperback / softback
Number of Pages: 448
Edition:
Publication Date: 06 Oct 2026
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Publication City, Country: London, United Kingdom
Dimensions (cm): 23.4(H)x15.4(L)x3.8(W)540
Weight (gm): 540

Author Biography

New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author Dylan Jones has written or edited over twenty-five books. In the eighties, he was one of the first editors of i-D, before becoming a Contributing Editor of The Face and Editor of Arena. He spent the next decade working in newspapers - principally the Observer and the Sunday Times - before embarking on a multi-award-winning tenure at GQ. During his editorship, Conde Nast's flagship magazine won more awards than any other title. A former columnist for the Guardian, the Independent and the Mail On Sunday, he is a Trustee of the Hay Festival and an independent BBC television producer. In 2012 he was awarded an OBE for services to publishing. He also served as the editor-in-chief of the Evening Standard.

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