BL-24 - Flipbook - Page 94
FOOD & DRINK
William Sitwell with the White Hart
behind - courtesy of Daffodil PR
SEDUCED
BY RESTAURANTS
By William Sitwell
the sound of crashing waves and seagulls.” “Yeah, great,
any other ideas?” I said. I am a food traditionalist and
found the mutterings of something called “molecular
gastronomy” tiresome.
William Sitwell is a British restaurant critic, writer,
and broadcaster, known for his work in The Daily
Telegraph and his role as a judge on MasterChef UK.
He is also, as he reveals here, poised to enter the
restaurant fray himself.
I
t was my Dick Rowe moment. It was 1999, and I
was deputy editor of Waitrose Food Illustrated, a
magazine I went on to edit, and worked on for almost
two decades.
The food editor, Nikki, suggested we commission a column
from a chef with a strange-sounding name. He was doing
interesting things near the River Thames in Bray. He had
a dish on the menu called Snail Porridge, another called
Sounds of the Sea. “You hold a conch shell to your ear,”
said Nikki, “and there’s a small audio device in it playing
A few days later, Heston Blumenthal gained a Michelin
star for his restaurant The Fat Duck and, as Dick Rowe
turned down The Beatles, so the chef who was named after
a motorway service station was probably promptly signed
up to write a column by Olive magazine, our closest rival
at the time.
We were on the cusp of the Millennium, and people were
excited at the idea of mawkish modernism, the theatre
of the restaurant experience and, indeed, people queued
around the virtual block for a table at The Fat Duck, so
much so that in due course Heston bought the pub next
door, The Hind’s Head, and one down the street, The
Crown.
94
BOISDALELIFE.COM
ISSUE 24
