Smoke Without Fire

I was the chef of Le Poulbot* in the mid-1980s, a time when being a chef was becoming a vaguely trendy, socially acceptable occupation. Several chefs, including Simon Hopkinson, Alastair Little, Nico Ladenis and Pierre Koffmann, were invited to have lunch cooked for them by the critics. Our hosts were the Blonds, the irreplaceable, charming publisher Anthony and his equally eccentric wife Laura, who inhabited an enormous flat in a converted warehouse somewhere near the river in Bermondsey.