They took the words right out of my mouth

"British cuisine? It's a joke, says the president of our Restaurateurs Association" was the headline of a full-page feature in London's Evening Standard. The first sentence of the article read: "London is the restaurant capital of the world. You know that, I know that, but will someone please tell the president of the Restaurateurs Association." Even my friends believed I had gone off my rocker. Despite the fact that I have been on record, both in print and in speeches, as having heralded this revolution before anyone else.

Embarrassment

My immediate worry was the embarrassment it would cause my association. I fired off a letter to the Standard asking them to clarify to their readers that the interview I gave was as a restaurateur, not as the president of the RAGB. The tape recording of the interview proved this. But they didn't publish my letter.

Never mind. As many chefs and restaurateurs have taken objection to my alleged remarks, I'd like to present here the gist of the interview I believed I was giving.

I said that I didn't believe that Britain had a cuisine, at least not according to the Collins English dictionary, which defines cuisine as "a style or manner of cooking food, eg, French cuisine". Britain has some unique food - some good, some bad - but the existence of British food does not by the dictionary's definition constitute a cuisine. If there is a cuisine in Britain at all, it is probably based in Lancashire, though Lancastrian cooking could hardly qualify as a full-blown cuisine representing this nation.

Subsequent to publication of the article, Antony Worrall Thompson claimed in our debate on BBC Radio 4 that he had unearthed 2,000 British recipes in his research. Maybe so, but so what? Does one have to research French or Italian recipes to know that their national and regional cuisines exist? I think not. Ask foreigners what they think British cuisine is and they'll say, "Is there one?" or, "Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding". Research will not persuade them otherwise. Besides, if Britain has a cuisine, why do only a handful of restaurants in its capital specialise in it?

Traditional

Then I went on to talk about so-called Modern British cuisine. I said something along the lines of: for there to be a modern derivative of a cuisine there has to be an antecedent, ie, a traditional cuisine of some sort in current usage. Ergo, no British cuisine… no Modern British cuisine, despite the latter phrase having become part of the vernacular. True, Modern British cooking exists, and chefs like Gary Rhodes, Alistair Little, and Simon Hopkinson, to name just three, are quite brilliant at it. Some, like Gary Rhodes, when at the Greenhouse, cooked traditional British dishes, but however delicious, popular and successful they were, they did not add up to a national cuisine.

Originality

Chefs like these reached the top of their profession undoubtedly by being original, but many of their imitators pale in comparison. Poor imitators often do what Richard Shepherd of Langan's calls "Lego on a plate". It may look great, maybe even taste great, but the food does not possess the depth that real cuisines do. Moreover, I believe that Modern British cooking is too similar to modern Australian and modern American and in that sense there is nothing uniquely British about it.

At the end of the interview I was asked to identify which restaurants served the Modern British food I was describing, and I named some of Conran's. This was reported as Gottlieb accusing Conran restaurants of "assembly food crimes". I never knocked Conran, nor British chefs, nor British cooking. My views about our amazing food and restaurant revolution have, over the years, been a matter of record.

Agree with me or not, I don't mind. But I do mind, I mind very much, being castigated for views that are not mine. Well, folks, that's journalism. Correction - that's journalism in Britain.