When Sitwell wrote the last chapter of The Restaurant, titled "The Future Of Eating Out", he had no idea that COVID-19 would so dramatically impact the future of restaurant. His book, he says, has thus become "a vicarious vision of what we until recently so loved and took for granted".

Sitwell covers, in 18 chapters, with numerous colour illustrations, culinary history from Pompeii to the present day. It is necessarily selective: "There is much in the story of the restaurant that is not in there. But then it's my story and that's my privilege . . . Restaurants are a key part of our culture, a cornerstone even. So this is a story of the human journey."

Sitwell begins in Pompeii, with its 160 bars and restaurants, many serving a form of pizza with white wine, a few even doubling up as brothels. He then jumps to Chaucer's London; Ibn Battuta, who ate in 40 countries over 32 years in the 14^th century and to the kitchens and "sharing dishes" of the 15^th-century Ottoman court of Sultan Murad II.

The dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII led to the loss of monastic rest houses. As a result, 24,000 alehouses had sprung up by 1577. In the late 17^th century, coffeehouses were increasingly popular, although wives complained coffee was making their husbands impotent, "mere cock- sparrows".

The word "restaurant", popularised in 1765 by M. Boulanger in Paris, derives from the French verb restaurer, to restore. Madame Guillotine, during the French Revolution, led to the number of restaurants in Paris growing from 50 in 1789 to 500 in 1799, as the chefs of executed aristocrats had to find new venues.

French gastronome Brillat- Savarin once said, "The fate of nations depends on how they eat". London lagged behind the haute cuisine of Paris in the 19^th century, although London clubs stood out, such as the Reform, where in 1841 French chef Alexis Soyer pioneered the clean gas stove as part of "the most famous and influential working kitchen in Europe".

The Hindoostane Coffee House, the first Indian restaurant in London, was opened in 1810, offering retired East Indian Company officials 'Indian dishes in the highest perfection". In contrast, the Parsi Bombay restaurant, Britannia & Co, which has its own chapter, was opened in 1923 by Rashid Kohinoor and gained its initial success from serving comfort food to British residents.

Sitwell worries that when Britannia's lease expires in 2022, it might become a McDonald's, whose origins are described along with those of Taco Bell. Sitwell documents, in "The Invention of the Sushi Conveyor Belt", another fast-food global phenomenon, in Yoshiaki Shiraishi's sushis, launched in 1958 as circling "the room like satellites in the sky".

Sitwell takes the reader back to earth when describing the bleak English culinary scene after the Second World War, epitomised by the creamed spam casserole of Simpsons restaurant and the sardine, mashed potato and dried egg powder at Prunier's, although on the plus side there was little obesity.

Of the 484 British restaurants, hotels and pubs covered in Raymond Postgate's first Good Food Guide (1951), only 11 served "foreign food", all being European except for one Chinese restaurant. Sitwell comments, "Elizabeth David may have brought a dose of romanticism to the nation with her A Book of Mediterranean Food (1950), but, for most, it was no more real than a quixotic novel".

In the 1960s, the Forte chain provided mass-market food at affordable prices, but it needed the Roux brothers, Michel and Albert, to expand British culinary horizons when they opened Le Gavroche in 1967. Le Gavroche and Simon Hopkinson's Bibendum have their own chapters, while Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck, Alice Waters' Chez Panisse in San Francisco and El Bulli in Barcelona are amongst the major restaurants featured.

Sitwell notes, "Restaurants don't exist in a vacuum....They form as part of our culture, for good or ill, as a part of (or in spite of) the political landscape or the economic scene." Even pre-COVID, few restaurants operated above a five or six per cent margin.

Keith Floyd once said being a chef "kills marriages, kills relationships and it kills life". COVID restrictions are currently killing many restaurants. Sitwell acknowledges the industry will take some time to recover, but when it does, "the genuine restaurant (not a place funded by lunatics and run by food faddists), run by people who have a passion to feed people and a belief in the principles of hospitality, has a firm place in the future of dining out".