Egon Ronay, the Hungarian food critic who transformed British eating habits, died yesterday at the age of 94. Launched in 1957, the Egon Ronay Guide to British Eateries rapidly became the food-lovers' bible, helping to improve the range and quality of British restaurant food, which, by international consensus at the time, was pretty ordinary.
The son of a prominent restaurateur from Budapest, Ronay emigrated to England in 1946 after first the Nazis and then the Russians left the family business in tatters.
He started off managing three restaurants in London owned by a friend of his father's, before borrowing £4,000 to set up his own, the Marquee, near Harrods in 1952. Described as "London's most food-perfect small restaurant" by Fanny Craddock in her Daily Telegraph column, on the menu were classic French dishes unheard of in Fifties Britain. He went on to write his own column for the paper for six years.
But it was the launch of the Egon Ronay Guides that made him the most famous and respected food critic in the UK. Inspired by the French Michelin Guide, the first edition sold 30,000 copies and over the next three decades it became synonymous with good food. Lauded for his integrity, Ronay and his team of anonymous inspectors never accepted a free meal or drink, and restaurants proudly displayed blue plaques in their window for each year they were listed.
With taste buds for talent, Ronay was an early champion of Marco Pierre White and Raymond Blanc, though in recent years he saved his highest praise for Gordon Ramsay. But he was just as passionate about food for the masses after a horrifying early experience at the Victoria Station buffet when he was forced to use a shared teaspoon – hung on a piece of string – to stir his tea.
This led him to cross swords on several occasions with Charles Forte about the quality of food served at the peer's Welcome Break and Little Chef outlets. The quality of airline catering became another bugbear and for four years in the 1990s he worked with the air authority BAA on improving standards.
As a food consultant for the pub chain J D Wetherspoon, he would famously turn up unannounced in a chauffeur-driven limousine to check the crispiness of the onion rings and fluffiness of the baked potatoes.
drive from www.independent.co.uk