Table Hopping: The Secret History of London Restaurants: from Langan s Brasserie to the Wolseley

In October 1976, the London restaurant world was turned upside down when Michael Caine, celebrated chef Richard Shepherd and Irish entrepreneur Peter Langan opened Langan's, a celebrity hangout that would revolutionise the capital's dining scene. This soon became the most celebrated restaurant in the city, and helped turn London into an internationally recognised culinary hot spot. Inheriting its status from Mr. Chow and St. Lorenzo, Langan's was soon joined by Joe Allen, Le Caprice and L'Escargot, making London the most vibrant restaurant capital of the age.

London never looked back. In the five decades since, the city has become the global culinary petri dish, a multi-cultural hotbed of super chefs and gastronomic ingenuity, of monstrous egos and appalling kitchen behaviour, bad reviews and scabrous critics (AA Gill, Giles Coren and Michael Winner), dictatorial maitre ds, inter-restaurant feuding (Jeremy King v Richard Caring, Jamie Oliver v Marci Pierre White, Gordon Ramsey v Gino D'Acampo, Marcus Wareing and Mario Batali), ridiculous trends (everything from nouvelle cuisine and kimchi to tasting menus and wine pairings), scandals (Gordon Ramsey, Boris Becker, Jamie Oliver), difficult customers ("What do you mean I can't have Table 3?"), financial shenanigans, global media attention and more.