Celebrating the Art of Dining in London
London is arguably the most exciting city for restaurants in the world. Other cities may try, but none come close to London’s innovation and choice on offer. The hospitality sector is inherently cosmopolitan, welcoming new cultures and tastes. Restaurants enhance London’s landscape to become part of Londoners’ lives, milestones, and memories.
The restaurant industry in London has drastically transformed in the past five decades, opening not just the tastebuds and wallets, but also the hearts and minds of Londoners. It continuously gets better: the roster of younger, patron-chefs now taking forward the hospitality philosophy of their predecessors by creating excellent cuisine, but also keeping restaurants accessible and part of the public’s life. What diners may take for granted today in their restaurants of choice, influences, local ingredients, rejecting elitism, setting up in new, neighbourhoods, would not be possible if it wasn’t for the risk-taking of restaurateurs and chefs of the previous decades. This lineage and influence in terms of creativity are what makes today’s vibrant restaurant industry possible.
For these reasons, our campaign and research project, The Art of Dining: Celebrate London Restaurants will share connections between past and present in London’s restaurant industry. We invite Londoners to rediscover and celebrate a selection of restaurants that have seasoned our culinary landscape for years, as well as the chefs, the restaurants and ventures they’ve inspired. Many have been part of our own lives and stories as Londoners for decades.
The showcase of restaurants observes the ethos of independence and authenticity. These restaurants are a mix of seasoned restauranteurs who pioneered new restaurants for their time, enduring challenges along the way, and influenced subsequent generations of chef-patrons. It also features newer restaurants, conscious of their place in this hospitality history. All are essential to the rich restaurant heritage we can enjoy whenever our circumstances allow us to.
Through showcasing their career progression, iconic restaurants, friendships, shared dining ethos, and kitchen stories, this project will begin to show how restaurants are cultural outputs in London as important as other creative pastimes and activities that make us.
London restaurants like these, are creative spaces that make an impact on diners and also the new generation and workforce of industry professionals. Supporting them is celebrating them and makes them sustainable beyond a seasonal menu.
Christina Makris, August 2023