There's eating... then there's really eating. As someone who existed on fish fingers, Vesta curries and dining out at Pizza Hut (please don't judge me!) I never appreciated just how good food could be until I visited a Nottingham restaurant called Ben Bowers in the early 1990s.
With its fancy menus and food I'd never eaten before it was a revelation. I remember trying wood pigeon for the first time with a blackberry sauce and feeling very grown up. I was hooked and it opened up a whole new world for me as a dedicated food lover.
Next it was onto French restaurant La Grenouille for frogs legs and snails, and Hotel des Clos, where a young chef called Sat Bains was already working his magic creating an explosion of flavours. The stilton brulée still has me salivating and I wish I could eat it all over again three decades on.
