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For quite a lot of people, their kitchen and dining room is a restaurant.
They neglect to shop, there is nothing at home to cook, but they have got to eat. That may seem like profligate behaviour but restaurants have gone from being an intermittent indulgence for the rich and posh to being a vital service in everyone's lives; part larder, part mum, part dating agency.
From that cup of coffee in the morning that is no longer instant but infinite in variety sipped on a sofa while utilising wi-fi to a lunch of sushi plucked off a conveyor belt to a pub for a remarkable evening meal and then maybe after late-night revelry freshly squeezed juice, shisha pipe and Lebanese pastries at 3am; this is a way of London life that not so long ago was unknowable — and maybe even unthinkable. Restaurants or simply outlets offering sustenance have proliferated, multiplied and woven themselves like never before into our way of being, working and playing.
Restaurants are a topic on which everyone has an opinion. The opinions of others are never quite as sound and profound as one's own but where to eat out and where to avoid is a more rewarding subject for discussion and disagreement than religion, sport or politics. Where once they were associated with occasional treats and the notion of largesse, it is now possible to argue — perhaps tentatively — that restaurants are relatively economical and also green.
Buying food in a supermarket invariably results in waste. Restaurants ensure that left overs are recycled. One big range cooking for many people is more fuel-efficient than dozens of little stoves fired up in domestic contexts. Portions are controlled.
Historically restaurants have eased immigrants into a means of making a living and expanded the culinary horizons of their customers. Like air to breathe and water to drink, food is a commodity without which there is no life but it brings with it important freight such as nurturing and the manifestation of unspoken emotion. “Guerrilla” and pop-up restaurants are not just a way to get dinner party guests to fork out money for the food; they are a vibrant and faintly illicit response to the universal need for gathering and breaking bread together.
For all these reasons and more, it occurred to me that London should celebrate its restaurants with an annual festival. London leads the world in the evolution of restaurants with every style, price point and nuance of worldwide cuisines available.
While the French beat themselves up over whether they should invent anew or glorify their gastronomic past — even approaching Unesco to have French cooking formally declared as part of the world's cultural patrimony — their chefs skip over here to work in what they perceive as a freer society and not only where culinary zest and experimentation are concerned.
From this conviction, with the help of the Mayor's Office, Visit London, Single Market Events, A Taste of London and A Private View, the consultancy I set up with Simon Davis, the London Restaurant Festival is blossoming. It will take place all over London from 8-13 October. The motivation is to salute the hard graft of restaurateurs, chefs, waiting staff and washers-up — and encourage Londoners and visitors to eat out even more and stray from their usual paths to try something and somewhere new.
Any restaurant, from fast food to fanfare food, can register a fixed-price menu created for the occasion on the London Restaurant Festival website. These meals will bestow the relaxation that comes from knowing in advance how much they will cost. There will be no coupons, vouchers, two-for-ones, just two or three courses offered that summarise the essence of any particular place at a stipulated price.
All kinds of events, from the serious, such as the inaugural lecture given by Simon Schama on an historical aspect of food, to the speculative — at Lucky Dice registered restaurants you can gamble on the chance of free food — via the deeply foodie (Gourmet Odysseys on Routemaster buses taking their passengers on a journey from first course to main course to dessert at selected stylish restaurants) there will be acknowledgment and celebration of what restaurant riches there are in London. Sunday lunch, that quintessentially British meal, will be rolled out for 400 ticket-holders at Leadenhall Market.
Rowley Leigh, Richard Corrigan, Mark Hix and other chefs who share their profound understanding of roasted meat will be cooking and carving. The streets will be running with gravy. Legendary chef Pierre Koffman will be running the ultimate pop-up restaurant on the roof of Selfridges. To prove that they are not only good with their hands, chefs will go head to head in Starter for Ten, a University Challenge-style quiz conducted by the blissful Bamber Gascoigne.
Eat Film is our food film festival taking place in cinemas across London. Food-driven films will be followed by a meal that matches the plot. Remember coming out of Eat Drink Man Woman desperate for Chinese food, or after Goodfellas wishing your mother would cook meatballs the way Martin Scorsese's mother did? This unique gastronomic take on films will satisfy those cravings.
Meanwhile every city needs a revolving restaurant. Ever thought that the London Eye would make the very best one? On the six nights of the festival a different chef specialising in a different ethnicity of cuisine will be serving dinner in one of the Eye capsules with the lights of London and beyond as décor.
Completely appropriately, the London Restaurant Festival Awards that will be the culmination of the festival are supported by the London Evening Standard. Decades ago when I started reviewing restaurants for this newspaper — a job, incidentally, that I won in a competition — the then features editor, Simon Jenkins, worried that I would run out of restaurants and also run out of steam. Neither of us could have predicted what in those days seemed like a handful of establishments multiplying, transmogrifying, atomising and invading every nook and cranny of hunger, appetite and taste for adventure. I haven't run out of steam and restaurants, if not exactly booming in these tough times, are holding their own. We need them.
www.londonrestaurantfestival.com
Simon Jenkins is away
Reader views (4)
If London really leads the world in the revolution of restaurants, the Shanghai World Expo to be held from May to October 2010 represents a great opportunity to show the world and the Chinese that our restaurants are world class. Will Fay lead the charge in ensuring that these restauranteurs get to demonstrate their talents at the Thomas Heatherwick-designed UK pavilion?
- Moira, London, 12/08/2009 07:39
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I love Fay's reviews, they are always reliable. It makes me laugh how stingy she is with the stars though, will anywhere ever get a five?
- James, London, 11/08/2009 18:34
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I've been in some good London eateries and some bloody awful ones. Plenty of 'em would rather sell you a bit of dodgy chicken or old veg than chuck it out 'cos it's old. You can't beat cooking your own; at least you have the option.
- Jayonly, Kingston upon Hull, 11/08/2009 15:41
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very little of substance to support the highly questionable assertion that London restaurants lead the way.
- Scotty, london, 11/08/2009 10:33
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