It's no secret that I haven't a lot of time for the World's 50 Most Expensive Restaurants Patronised By Point-Scoring Namedroppers (it may not actually be called that), but I did applaud one thing: its celebration of Fergus Henderson. The butcher's-cloth-suited, understated genius behind St John is one of the few within the restaurant biz who can genuinely be described as seminal. He's a man who turns even the laconic likes of Antony Bourdain into gushing fans.
His restaurant is famously uncompromising: a white, operating theatre of a room in a former smokehouse, staffed by intense acolytes. When I first encountered the original purveyors of pared-back at St John Bread and Wine (whose kitchen Lyle's co-owner and head chef James Lowe ran for some years), straight off the boat from the provinces, I laughed like a drain at Londoners happy to shell out nearly a fiver for a bowl of peas in a pod. Yep, a handful of raw peas, to pod and pop in your gob. It's still quite funny.
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