ANDREW TURVIL
Andrew Turvil is a restaurant writer, critic, and editor who has spent more than thirty years writing about food and drink.
He is the former editor of The Good Food Guide, the AA Restaurant Guide, and the Which? Pub Guide.
He began his career in a junior editorial role at The Good Food Guide in the early 1990s, working alongside editors Tom Jaine and Jim Ainsworth, before going on to manage the Guide's team of inspectors and edit the Which? Pub Guide during the rise of the gastropub. He became editor of the Which? Good Food Guide itself, completing four editions between 2004 and 2007, before going freelance and later taking on the editorship of the AA Restaurant Guide.
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Described by The Independent as one of the UK's "arbiters of taste," Andrew did the poacher-turned-gamekeeper thing in 2015, buying and co-owning a London pub, which he ran for a decade.
Blood, Sweat & Asparagus Spears is his first book.
Blood, Sweat and Asparagus Spears
Financial Times – Best Books of 2025
Winner, Special Award of the Jury, Gourmand Awards 2025
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From White Heat to Wagamama, this is the inside story of the explosive decade that changed eating out in Britain forever. In 1990, Britain was mocked for its bland food and over-boiled veg; by 2000, the country was on its way to becoming one of the world's most exciting culinary hotspots. Former Good Food Guide editor Andrew Turvil was there for all of it — tasting Marco Pierre White's three-Michelin-starred cooking, clocking Jamie Oliver's first TV appearance, and fielding furious phone calls from irate chefs.
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In sparkling prose, Blood, Sweat and Asparagus Spears charts the wild ride from the cigarette-fuelled "SAS of kitchens" to Nobu's celebrity glamour, via the £5 recession lunch and the arrival of conveyor-belt sushi. Drawing on contemporary reviews and original interviews — including first-hand accounts from Marco Pierre White, Paul Heathcote, Vineet Bhatia, Heston Blumenthal, and many more — the book reveals the triumphs, pitfalls, and night-shift epiphanies that transformed Britain from a "country of one sauce" into a nation of food obsessives.
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Along the way, readers get a tasting tour of thirty-three iconic dishes that still shape restaurant menus today, from Black Cod Miso to Triple-Cooked Chips, and a behind-the-pass look at how the decade forged the careers of today's headline chefs and set the template for Britain's modern, multicultural food identity.
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Fast-paced, funny, and meticulously researched, this is a love letter to restaurants — and the people who bled to make them great. Jay Rayner called it an efficient romp through the postwar decades, one dish at a time, while The Sunday Times praised it as a valuable historical contribution and a delightful read.
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