The Good Food Guide editor who's sharing his restaurant memories of the most 'exciting' decade

It was the food revolution era, when it came to restaurants.

Before then, eating out was a once-a-year special occasion. Almost overnight, it became a hobby for those who could afford it.

At the top table was Andrew Turvil, former editor of The Good Food Guide, who has written a new book, Blood, Sweat and Asparagus Spears, which covers and contextualises those headily greedy times.

Britain went from being known for its overboiled veg, then along came Marco Pierre White, Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal et al.

London was the epicentre, but the effect trickled up here. Wherever you were, we spent the decade eating dishes like miso black cod, bone marrow and triple-cooked chips.

In Turvil’s book, there are namechecks for quite a few Scottish restaurants and chefs. These include La Potiniere in Gullane, as well as the late Andrew Fairlie and Paul Kitching - who, the book says, “isn’t the household name he deserves to be”- plus The Peat Inn and The Cross in Kingussie, among others.

We asked Turvil to tell us more.

Are you excited or nervous to get the book out?

Excited. It took a year to research and write it, and really it was just going into my past. I started off by going through all The Good Food Guides I worked on in the Nineties and it was great to go back down memory lane.

It’s a great Marco Pierre White picture on the cover, why did you go for that?

I’m very pleased that he gave permission. It was taken in the late Eighties, and just captures his absolute exhaustion. My book actually is published on the 35th anniversary of his book White Heat coming out.

Is he going to read it?

I hope so. He's been sent a copy. I've spoken to him a few times, and he's an amazing individual. The book deals a lot with his significance as a sort of the totem or figurehead of a movement of confidence in British chefs.

Was there a lot that you'd forgotten that you rediscovered while doing your research?

Very much. I owned a pub for nine years and sold that, and thought, I need to write a book. And when I started looking back into what it might be about, it became so obvious that it should be about the Nineties because of the many things that happened. And certainly, when you look back, you realise what a seminal era it was for eating out.

What sort of trends were there in food at the time?

The popular terms at the time were all very exciting. I think Heston now distances himself from the term molecular gastronomy. But at the time, when you're going through a period of change, they're useful. They're part of the energy and the excitement, things like fusion cuisine. People do tend to raise their eyebrows, but it brought us some really exciting combinations, which we didn't have before. It certainly felt in this country that we needed to move forward. We were too dependent on French dining.

Globalization was something that happened in the Nineties as well. Very few of my generation of travellers went far out of Europe. There wasn't this trail of kids going to Vietnam and Cambodia and Australia, because that was really expensive as a student. The easyJets formed in the Nineties. We were perhaps more open to new ideas, and not as restrained or constrained by the sort of formalities of the past.

How many copies of The Good Food Guide were you publishing back then?

My memory is that, at the end of the Eighties, it was around 100,000 copies. They're currently on an online app, which is fantastic. They're doing really well and keeping the brand alive. But gradually, it did reduce through the Nineties. There was pressure on the economy as well, particularly the early part of that decade. When I was editor, even then, you'd sense it was nearing the end of the print era for a book like that. Now, everything is so instant, isn't it? It's a very different world.

Now that you’re not reviewing, is it nice to go for the simple options on the menu?

I think most people that do it professionally, we do crave simplicity. Multiple courses are great. I don't want them to ever change. But I don't want that as often as I used to. The Nineties gave us that with restaurants like St John in London, where they really pared things back. So while certain chefs, like White and Ramsay were pushing for Michelin stars, and Blumenthal was really exploring how food works, others were concentrating on the ingredients and doing things simply. That's the kind of diversity that we have now in the restaurant scene. You can go out and have an amazing, very expensive blowout meal of exceptional quality, but you can also find places that are doing simple things really well.

There are a few Scottish restaurants, like Inverlochy Castle and Restaurant Andrew Fairlie, that got mentioned in the book - been to any other good ones recently?

I was on Ben Nevis last year, as I did the Three Peaks Challenge in three days. I did stay in Glasgow, which was actually my first time there for years, and I had a really nice meal in Brel. The last time I was in Edinburgh was a few years ago, and I was in Aizle. That was absolutely fantastic. That kind of restaurant reflects the changes that came through the Nineties. It was about sort of local produce and everything felt really connected to the area. The food was exciting and modern, but also quite simply about the ingredients.

Who do you think will read the book?

I was kind of thinking of someone around 40 who can maybe just about remember the Nineties. So I think foodies and definitely chefs. Sally Clarke said she read it on a flight to New York. She loved it, and so that's really nice.

Blood, Sweat and Asparagus Spears: The Story of the 1990s Restaurant Revolution is out now in hardback, £20, Elliott & Thompson

Read more: “I took my family to Edinburgh’s newst pizza restaurant and they were so impressed”

Read more: “I tried the new £39.50 lunch in Edinburgh’s most elegant dining room and it was a proper treat”

Read more: “I’m always asked where to find Edinburgh’s best Sunday lunch, now I know what to tell them”