‘Kitchens used to be terrifying places to work. You had to be very careful – there was quite a bit of sabotage and backstabbing amongst chefs. But that’s all changed now because you simply can’t get away with it. When I first became head chef I was a bit of a nightmare to be honest, but I quickly realised you get through far too many chefs leading like that. When you get a bit older you become more experienced and more patient, and realise that a nice working environment is good for everyone, so long as they’re all pulling their weight.

‘While I think it’s great that cooking is considered cool now, the change in younger chefs coming into the industry has been unbelievable. You get youngsters coming from catering college to do a trial and they do well so you hire them. But when it comes to the nitty gritty, doing it day in day out when you’re broken and tired, the stress, the hours – it’s too much. All they see is the fame and glamour of TV chefs, and unfortunately half of TV chefs can’t cook to save their lives. When they get a taste of reality they soon change their minds. You do get the odd one come through who’s fantastic, but most are very disillusioned. I don’t think they were ever expecting the amount of work it takes to cook at this level.’

‘I remember when I was working with Nick Gill thirty years ago we’d get two fish deliveries a week from Billingsgate – that would be it. Now you can get fish delivered twice a day, and that’s the same for meat and veg. In my experience chefs have always believed they’re only as good as their ingredients, but the access to great produce and the way kitchens used to be managed meant that was harder than it is today.

‘Sea vegetables are something that you never used to see, apart from samphire. They’re delicious and there’s loads of it now. Back then though, nobody really knew it was edible, so there was no demand for it. English truffles are a big thing now too, because the climate’s changed – I get so many phone calls from people saying they think they’ve found some, and I tell them to bring them in straight away!’

‘It’s one of the biggest changes that’s happened in the kitchen over the past twenty-five years, and it’s all Heston’s fault. I love slow-cooking and it really brings out the flavour of meat, particularly fatty cuts like shoulder of lamb. You might’ve seen the odd piece of pork belly back in the old days, but the cuts that are popular now weren’t really seen in restaurants. There was an element of snobbery there, and people wanted fillet. But I don’t want fillet on my à la carte – I want a piece of medium-rare Jacob’s ladder, slow-cooked for thirty hours at sixty-three degrees so when you eat a piece it completely melts.

‘A lot of food was French back then, with beurre blanc, cream and butter everywhere, but I think that all started to change when people became more health conscious. It’s better in terms of flavour, too – twenty-five years ago, if you wanted to make a fennel sauce, for example, you’d chop up some fennel, add some cardamom, maybe a bit of vanilla, then two packs of butter and some cream, before reducing and puréeing it. It’s still delicious, but by cooking it for so long you lose the fennel flavour. Today, you can use a Thermomix to blitz some fresh fennel with tomato essence, pass it off and you’re left with a liquor that you can thicken with natural starch. That leaves you with a n intense, fresh fennel flavour that really hits you. It elevates anything it’s served with.’

‘It was crap, wasn’t it? I was looking at some of the old dishes that used to be served here – they weren’t mine, thank God – and some of them were shocking. I think it was certainly an afterthought; you look at the classic French dishes, and presentation was pretty poor back then. While it’s much better now, you have to be careful how far you push it. If you over-elaborate and you put too many things on the plate you can confuse the diner and lose clarity of flavour. You can’t just put something there because it adds colour – it has to add flavour too. Desserts are a little bit different, as you can show off a bit more with them, but with starters and mains you want to concentrate on the flavours and ensure they have that wow factor.’

‘Eating out has become much less formal, especially at lunchtime. When I first started here if you had ten in for lunch you were busy – today we’ve got forty-five. That all started when we began offering lunch for less, and it really helped kick off our local business. People soon realised that you didn’t need to spend an arm and a leg to eat here, and once they arrived they saw that it wasn’t as stuffy as they probably thought. It’s the same in the evening, too – not everyone is suited and booted. I’m pleased it’s not as formal as it used to be. You certainly wouldn’t get kicked out for not having a tie on – twenty years ago you probably would’ve.’

‘When I first started cooking it was a lot like it is now – all about simplicity and good ingredients. Then it started to become fashionable to serve something really complex, to an extreme really; when I was at Le Manoir there were fifteen pans for one dish! So in ten years we might go back to that again. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s all about coming up with something new in the kitchen every day. I think food will become lighter, with diners wanting flavours and combinations they’d never expect to work. But you can’t read into it too much – you just have to cook well.’