PHOTOGRAPHS: ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES, MATT AUSTIN
April 1999: a 23-year-old chef slides down some banisters, roasts some lamb, says ‘pukka’ several times… and changes Britain’s relationship with food. Jamie Oliver’s first series, The Naked Chef, began with these words: “Cooking’s gotta be simple. It’s got to be tasty. It’s got to be fun.” It was a manifesto for a new way of cooking: one that reclaimed food from Michelin-obsessed chefs and competitive dinner parties. Yet no one could have predicted just how much of an impact Jamie would have over the next 20 years.
It was a momentous year for food. Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat was a huge hit. River Cottage made its TV debut just as the mantras ‘eat local’ and ‘eat seasonal’ were taking root. Few people could have realised it – distracted as we were by the Y2K bug, Britney Spears and The Matrix – but the stage was being set for the thriving British food culture we have today.
THE ROOTS OF THE REVOLUTION
British food was in a strange place. The fall-out from the salmonella scare of the late Eighties put consumers off British eggs. The BSE (‘mad cow’) crisis affecting livestock made headlines throughout the 1990s. “Public trust slowly eroded as a series of food scandals got into the news. BSE was the last straw,” says Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at City University London.