Pictured here outside his eponymous restaurant on Frith Street, in Soho, Alastair Little was one of the most important chefs in the recent history of eating out in Britain. He opened Alastair Little in 1985, and did away with the rigmarole of many of the capital's most esteemed dining rooms at the time, stiffly bent as they were across the channel. Floors and tables were bare, with paper napkins only; diners could see the chefs and the kitchen; and the menu changed twice daily, according to what was good: a practice Little had incubated in his previous role as chef at 192 in west London. None of this seems remarkable now; neither does pouring green, grassy olive oil over dishes in abundance; slicing raw beef for an Italian carpaccio, or being unafraid to put tomato, mozzarella, basil, and olive oil on a plate and call it a dish. But then, it was, and Little's way of cooking, influenced by food writers like Marcella Hazan, Jane Grigson, and Elizabeth David, would become foundational to first modern European and then modern British cuisine in the U.K. Two years after his restaurant opened, Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray opened a place you might know called The River Cafe in Hammersmith, together with Bibendum, home of Simon Hopkinson, and Kensington Place, with Rowley Leigh on the pans. Five years after that, Fergus and Margot Henderson would run the French House with Jon Spiteri; Fergus and Trevor Gulliver would open St. John two years later. Little's ways of thinking and cooking were foundational to these chefs, and so they are to London dining as it exists today. Click the link in bio to read more about him.