London's 1000 most influential people 2011: Foodies

5 April 2012

Lorraine Pascale
TV chef and cookery writer
Born to Caribbean parents, placed in care at three months then adopted by a white family and later fostered, former model and car mechanic Lorraine Pascale was an early entrant into the recent baking frenzy with her TV show Baking Made Easy. Talk that she might replace Jamie Oliver as the face of Sainsbury's is said to be wide of the mark.

Arjun Waney
Venture capitalist, restaurateur
With Zuma and Roka exported around the world and La Petite Maison successfully imported from Nice, Waney stays busy with involvement in the purchase and revamp of The Arts Club in Dover Street (Gwyneth Paltrow and Prince Philip were memorably snapped together there). The opening of Aurelia in Cork Street and then Banco in North Audley Street are next on the menu.

Jamie Oliver
TV presenter and entrepreneur
Jamie's been in touch with Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, to enlist him in a fight against obesity and diet-related disease. If Jamie could take all the food that is making one half of the world fat to feed the other half that is starving, he would. Meanwhile TV, books, magazines, restaurants, and merchandise roll on and out.

Richard Caring
Entrepreneur
Prolific and relentless, Caring's myriad catering enterprises are showing an upturn in the downturn. Over the next seven years the man in black intends to spread Caprice Holdings brands to 22 countries. Meanwhile Soho House travels, Côte and Bill's chains roll out, plans to bring Keith McNally's Balthazar to Covent Garden trundle on and steakhouse 34 Grosvenor Square has just opened.

Angela Hartnett
Chef
As well as running Michelin-starred Murano and the restaurant at Whitechapel Gallery, the Good Food Guide 2012 Chef of the Year has struck gold in a joint venture with Smart Hospitality, winning the catering contract for the Olympic Hospitality Centre. She remains sweet with it. The former Gordon Ramsay protégée has come a long way.

Daniel Boulud
Chef and restaurateur
French-born Boulud has brought his New York savvy to the capital with his successful Bar Boulud at The Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park. "Daniel's involved in everything from the foie gras to the toilet paper," says his company. Boulud has been a London trailblazer for all the big guns of US restaurants, with reinforcements coming in the form of Wolfgang Puck into The Dorchester and Thomas Keller popping up at Harrods.

Heston Blumenthal
TV, food boffin and supermarket chef
The chef-cum-food scientist from the Fat Duck is now known for so much more than snail porridge and fun with liquid nitrogen. Dinner, his history-inspired restaurant at The Mandarin Oriental in Knightsbridge, is packed, while he's a marketing force for Waitrose as part of a double act with Delia Smith. Frisky Heston is in demand.

Jeremy King
Christopher Corbin
Restaurateurs
The two most respected restaurateurs in town for their history with Le Caprice, The Ivy and J Sheekey and more recently The Wolseley. Their stock looks set to rise further with the opening of The Delaunay in Covent Garden, another grand café named after a car. There will be innovative takeaway.

Nigel Slater
TV chef and cookery writer
The subtitle to his vaguely autobiographical Toast was "The Story of a Boy's Hunger". Happily, for fans of the apparently ascetic Slater - who writes with greedy pleasure - that hunger is never satisfied, the story never over. Who is he cooking for in his Highbury house with its bountiful garden? He's cooking for you.

Tom Byng
Byron, founder
Working with the backing of the Gondola Group (Pizza Express, Ask, Zizzi) Byng has brought a better burger to the masses by concentrating on the essentials and letting each outlet - 17 and rising - express an individual look. The mince is ground every morning (one important essential). Byron Shack caters festivals.

Petra Barron
Street food seller
Involved with mobile food since 2005, it was her van Choc Star that revealed to Petra Barron the animating effect of food sold on the streets. The "normalisation of eating well" is one of the aims of the website eat.st, devoted to opening up opportunities and breathing personality, informality and exuberance into urban spaces.

Russell Sage
Interior designer
Fashion designer turned decorator, espouses the antithesis of what he terms "international luxury". His view on British interiors is that they should reflect the spoils from a Grand Tour, a look that can be appreciated at Zetter Town House and Bread Street Kitchen. He also made The Goring in Victoria ready for the Middletons on the eve of the royal wedding.

Ruth Rogers
Restaurateur and cookery writer
After the death of close friend and business partner Rose Gray, Ruthie, married to architect and peer Richard Rogers, has described herself as "a single parent with 70 children to look after". River Café alumni have frequently gone on to great careers for themselves. Ruthie might do her own thing now. "Why not? I think I could."

Tim Martin
JD Wetherspoon, founder
Six feet six inches tall with shaggy hair and baggy clothes, former law student Martin has been called "the Ulysses of the on trade" (rather than the off-licensed trade). He wanders from pub to pub honing instincts that have taken good-value 'Spoons - as students say - well on the way to being the biggest pub chain in Britain. Straight-talking, hates the euro and spurns media appearances for a couple of pints.

Mark Hix
Chef and restaurateur
After leaving Caprice Holdings where he had styled the menus of The Ivy, Le Caprice and Scott's, the personal empire of the champion of indigenous produce flourishes. Following Hixy ventures in Smithfield, Mayfair, Soho, Lyme Regis and Selfridges, expect restaurant No 6 before the end of the year.

Fergus Henderson
Restaurateur and writer
With St John Hotel "from table to bed" now up and running, the father of the "nose to tail" pragmatic, unsentimental, gutsy approach to cooking continues to be a tangible influence on the menus of young British chefs whose hearts don't yearn and heads don't turn for Michelin stars (even though Fergus has one).

Jack O'Shea
Butcher
Meat has been the family business of the O'Shea clan of Tipperary since 1790. With a roster of London's best restaurants as clients, Jack, keen to introduce unusual cuts to Britain, serves civilians from his all-encompassing 40ft counter in Selfridges food hall. No beefs about the quality of the meat.

Bill Granger
TV cook and restaurateur
The housewives' favourite tanned Aussie TV cook looks certain to woo west London's yummy mummery. He is about to open his first London outpost of Bill's in Westbourne Grove, where he lives when not tending the six branches of the brunch-focused restaurant brand spread between Sydney and Japan.

Giles Coren
The Times restaurant critic, TV presenter
The enfant terrible of food reviewing is a father now and while he might rant about nappy-changing facilities, he doesn't let that interrupt the championing of green issues in his restaurant column. Having campaigned against bottled water, he went on to reward smiling and now all his reviews carry a Sustainable Restaurant Association rating - staying entertaining throughout. Intelligent TV performer too.

Eric Narioo
Wine merchant and restaurateur
With the invaluable help of chef Ed Wilson, dishy Narioo, proselytiser for "natural" (additive-free) wines from his company Caves de Pyrène, has created the award-winning Terroirs in the West End and the lovable Brawn in the East End. Soif in Battersea and then a Covent Garden venue focusing on food and wines from the Loire follow.

Russell Norman
Restaurateur
Former Caprice Holdings operations director, Russell swapped designer suits for
tattoo-revealing T-shirts and in partnership with Richard Beatty opened hip Italo-American Polpo, Polpetto, Spuntino and da Polpo, all going straight into profit -
helped by harnessing the power of Twitter. Next is Mishkin's - Jewish deli food, plus cocktails.

Chris Pople
Restaurant blogger
In an online world where gush and enthusiasm are not in short supply, Pople brings much-needed mischievous wit, intelligence, sound knowledge of London restaurants and (only occasionally) inverted snobbery to the blogosphere via his postings on Cheese and Biscuits.

Sam Bompas
Harry Parr
Jellymongers, co-founders
These architectural foodsmiths launched Jellymongers in 2007 but Old Etonians Sam and Harry have gone far beyond jelly as a creative medium for food. A five-tonne chocolate waterfall and an intoxicating gin and tonic cloud are some of their recent projects which have grabbed the attention of architects Lords Rogers and Foster. "Global food domination" is their stated aim.

Michel Roux Jr
TV star and chef
Having appeared slightly demented on MasterChef for the professionals, Albert's son was wise, measured and sweetly avuncular on the BBC 2 series Service concerning the equally important front-of-house aspect of restaurants. Michel Jr runs the estimable Le Gavroche, created by his father and uncle, as successfully as he runs marathons.

Giles Gibbons
Sustainable Restaurant Association, co-founder
From the corporate social responsibility consultancy Good Business Ltd, Gibbons's interest in consumer-led change has involved him in the SRA. Criticised at the outset for its inclusivity and low bar for entry, it is resonating with restaurateurs and customers alike in demonstrating that small incremental changes can make a big difference.

Sally Clarke
Chef, baker and cookery writer
The favourite female restaurateur of the late Lucian Freud cooks and serves, as she has done for more than a quarter of a century, concentrating on the best topical ingredients prepared with affectionate understanding and delivered with dignity. Kensington locals take away from her shop and pass the food off at their dinner parties.

Thomasina Miers
Cookery writer and restaurateur
Career advice at St Paul's Girls School is probably not cooking but "Tommi", built along fashion model lines, found her feet emotionally and practically when, after learning to cook and winning amateur MasterChef 2005, she was inspired by the food of Mexico. The Wahaca chain was the result and her Mexican Food Made Simple was recently aired on Channel 5. Cut her teeth as a freelancer on the Standard's Londoner's Diary.

Giorgio Locatelli
Chef and cookery writer
Not only through being irresistibly handsome, Locatelli changed the face of Italian chefs in London. From a family of Lombardy restaurateurs, he has always conflated work and home, heading his website Welcome to la Convivialatà and meaning it. That Kate Winslet and Gwen Stefani were at the recent launch of his book Made in Sicily just means the family is extended.

Gwilym Davies
Barista
Beyond Kiwi contributions to London's recent coffee revolution, Yorkshire-bred Davies, a former world barista champion, has done much to raise the quality of the capital's coffee. His company Prufrock runs the London BRAT (Barista Resource and Training) alongside the eponymous café in Leather Lane.

AA Gill
Sunday Times restaurant critic
Gill's caustic prose continues to take aim at random targets and sermonise on tangential topics but increasingly he takes more time and space to write with erudition on the actual dining experience. Like a Mitford, he loves to tease, and victims invariably rise to it with satisfying fury.

Jason Atherton
Chef, cookery writer and consultant
Having happily departed Gordon Ramsay Holdings to go solo, Atherton wasted no time in proving that he is his own man with the opening of the ambitious and multi-faceted Pollen Street Social, rapidly anointed with a Michelin star and Best New Restaurant in the Good Food Guide 2012.

Nuno Mendes
Chef
With the Loft Project - a supper club and showcase for a new generation of chefs - his tasting menu-only restaurant Viajante and the more accessible Corner Room in Bethnal Green Town Hall, well-travelled, maverick, cutting-edge Mendes has shone a bright light into a previously dark part of the gastronomic map.

Chris Galvin
Jeff Galvin
Restaurateurs
The Essex brothers Galvin have successfully transformed themselves from industrious, respected chefs to award-winning restaurateurs. They put the luxe into bistro in Baker Street, brought worthy food to a room with a view from the 28th floor of Hilton Park Lane and wowed the City with their canonical conversion in Spitalfields.

Dick Bradsell
Cocktail guru
An escapee from the Isle of Wight, Bradsell has opened countless classic bars and invented legendary libations such as Russian Spring Punch and Snood Murdekin. A steady stream of hero-worshipping young bartenders goes to look and learn at his bar beneath El Camion in Soho.

Simon Hopkinson
Cookery writer and TV chef
Having left the kitchen of Bibendum and spent years shunning the limelight and concentrating on writing - Roast Chicken and Other Stories was voted most useful cookery book - Hopkinson recently starred in The Good Cook on BBC1, deliciously conveying the virtues of gastronomic care, flair and attention to a new generation.

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