Egon Ronay, the Hungarian food critic credited with changing the eating habits of a generation, has died aged 94.
Fellow food critic Michael Winner is among those to pay tribute to Ronay, writing in the Daily Mail he said:
Food critics are the most useless people in the world. None of them knows what they’re talking about. They’re pompous, arrogant show-offs who write in over-flowing sentences about sauces that no one knows or cares about.
There was only one exception and he died on Saturday, aged 94, at his home in Berkshire. His name was Egon Ronay.
After arriving in London in 1946 as a refugee and being horrified at the standard of food available, Ronay managed a series of restaurants before eventually establishing his own, called the Marquee, impressing food writer Fanny Craddock so much she described it as London’s “most food-perfect’ small restaurant.
This led Ronay to begin writing a weekly restaurant column for The Daily Telegraph. His articles were so enthusiastically received he then started his own range of guides in 1957.
The Daily Telegraph said Ronay and an inspector would travel around Britain in his car for several weeks, eating four meals a day.
The first issue of his guide sold 30,000 copies. The series would run for the next thirty years.
He is survived by his second wife Barbara, his two daughters and an adopted son.
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