September 28, 2025

Andrew Turvil

28 minutes

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 and is available at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blood-Sweat-Asparagus-Spears-Restaurant/dp/1783969113.

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.

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.

Fashionable restaurants of the past were revived in the 1990s and gained new leases of life

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

Asian food in the UK took a great leap forward during the 1990s

The 1990s saw a proliferation of new foodie terms: nose to tail, fusion, Pacific rim and molecular gastronomy.

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