Ask him about supermarkets, and he'll tell you they're sterile, impersonal places which have "killed the community spirit which once allowed us to chat with Sid the grocer".
Both reactions are typical of the critical, some say over-aggressive style he uses in his biting The Sunday Times column. Winner's approach is not to everyone's taste.
Anecdotal evidence from food industry luminaries shows that a lot of them loathe his words, suggesting he has long since turned rudeness into an artform. Spend time with him at his London home and it's easy to see why the great and good of food would hold that view.
As one multiple CEO put it to me recently: "Thank God he doesn't visit supermarkets in the same way he does restaurants!"
Yet, judging by the hundreds of letters and e-mails he receives every week, there are also many who admire his no-nonsense style. "I wish I had had the nerve to say that," is typical of a nervous diner's reaction after a bad experience in an expensive, upmarket eaterie.
Causing an enormous stir
Winner's first restaurant review, as he tells you with obvious pride, caused "an enormous stir and became the talking point of the chattering classes". Thus, as the foreword to his new book proclaims, when he enters a restaurant or hotel, to say everyone is on red alert is to put it mildly.
Typical of his egotistical style is one of his more notable quotes: "A team effort is a lot of people doing what I say." Quite.
Indeed, interviewing the tell it as it is' Winner is quite an experience. All the trappings of business success are there. There's an enormous paper-strewn desk overshadowed by a giant oil painting. There's a battery of official-looking internal telephones situated conveniently close by. And Winner makes his intentions clear to the visiting journalist when he switches on a mini tape machine.
So given his legendary opinions of the restaurant world, what about grocery? Is he a supermarket shopper, for example: "No" comes the quickfire answer with a snarl of disgust. "Can't stand big stores." A predictable start, but perhaps I should have known better than to have asked the question.
But what, I asked the self-confessed eccentric millionaire, did he think about the grocery industry in general?
After regaling me with a complaint about the meat he had been served the previous evening ("You would never have known it was lamb from a blind test"), he promptly dismisses the quality of British food as "generally good, but far less good than it was in the fifties".
His justification for this opinion is equally direct. "In those days, nothing was force-fed. Food was not chemicalised and injected. There were no salmon or cod farms. The taste was very real. The old-fashioned meat and two veg was a thoroughly good thing. Nowadays you can't see the veg. There are a couple of decorated half Brussels sprouts which are just used as plate decoration." The words rattled out in machine gun fashion.
But why does he believe that the quality of our food has deteriorated during the past half century? "Things have changed because more people are buying what is laughingly known as the more expensive food. And in order to make it less expensive it is factory farmed, whether it is an apple or a potato."
They trust me very much'
He adds: "To meet this greater demand because of greater wealth, manufacturers are having to produce more and keep their profit ratios up by chemically helping the food. This does not help the taste."
The aggressive style softens as he admits with a warm smile that he was fortunate enough to have been born to "quite rich parents".
And there are even more surprises on the way when the scourge of the catering classes admits: "I know nothing about food. But, from the age of five I was lucky enough to have been taken into wonderful restaurants. And if you study something by experience, day after day, you know what is good and bad.
"It is largely my opinion, of course. What I don't know is what goes into the food. I couldn't tell you the constituent ingredients of a sauce or anything of that complexity.
"But I don't think the public, on the whole, want to know about that. They want a jolly account of an eccentric millionaire wandering around the world describing what he thinks of food. And I find that they trust me very much."
Lamenting the passing of many family grocers, butchers and greengrocers, he accuses supermarkets of "downgrading" the quality of food in the cause of bringing more of it to the masses.
Gazing wistfully out of his first floor study to the spectacular, palm fringed garden below, he continues: "It used to be the case of the family shop  Sid the grocer or Betty the butcher  getting the food from the local land or fish from local rivers and the sea. Of course, that is uneconomic in today's world. But at least we didn't have deep freezing of food in those days. That is a disaster. The minute food is deep frozen, it is gone."
So does he own a freezer: "No I don't," he snorts.
Undeterred, he steps back on to the nostalgia route, adding: "In my youth, a grocer was a grocer. The grocer today is a supermarket that sells hundreds of different things brought in by great containers. God knows how old the food is. The word fresh' is the most misused word in the world."
But what about the chains who trade on a freshness image? His face crinkles in annoyance and the reply is rapid: "Well, it's all nonsense." Having said that, Winner does at least admit that supermarkets have helped to bring produce to people who would otherwise not get it. But this is only a break from the critical style. He goes back on the attack with the comment: "A lot of people can now afford smoked salmon who could not afford it when I was young. But they are eating rubbish. Nowadays it is pumped up salmon that is full of fat. However, people don't know they are eating rubbish because they never ate the fish that was really good."
We have to live in the real world'
And he goes on: "I realise, however, that we have to live in the real world. British food is required in vast quantities to go to a vast number of people who can now afford to buy food of greater variety."
Bemoaning the absence of good, old-fashioned specialist food stores in London other than butchers like R Allen and the Lidgate company, he adds: "Good fish is very difficult to get, and you can't find a fellow selling potatoes that came out of the ground the week before."
Admitting that he went to a vegetarian school, although rarely lost an opportunity to "escape to the village for sausage and chips", Winner concedes that organically produced food "tastes a bit better".
But he swiftly returns to attack mode to show that he can be equally forthright about GM food, despite his obvious liking for things organic. "The idea that Africa should starve because the Africans should not be given genetically modified food is absolutely pathetic. I would eat GM food. I am eating so much food with chemicals in it, a bit more or less makes no bloody difference. After all, pure food is more or less unavailable."
And venting his spleen on consumer attitudes to food scares, he adds: "Our bodies are actually quite resilient. Foods which may be full of chemicals, and which I may not like, are not killing people en masse. I don't see them collapsing outside restaurants, and trucks coming to take the dead bodies away."
Did he eat British beef during the mad cow disease scare? "Of course I did, although I'm quite sure my supplier got his meat from very selective sources."
But Winner, despite his perceptions of the UK food industry, is a realist. "It's one thing for people like me wanting pure food, untouched by chemicals or anything except human hands. But that is unrealistic for the world in which we live.Having said all that, I'm very glad that I was born early enough to see the other world."
Winner would be booed off the stage were he ever asked to speak at the IGD annual convention. But then, he probably wouldn't accept the invitation.
n The Winner Guide to Dining and Wining is published by Robson Books at £8.99.
{{ANALYSIS }}
Both reactions are typical of the critical, some say over-aggressive style he uses in his biting The Sunday Times column. Winner's approach is not to everyone's taste.
Anecdotal evidence from food industry luminaries shows that a lot of them loathe his words, suggesting he has long since turned rudeness into an artform. Spend time with him at his London home and it's easy to see why the great and good of food would hold that view.
As one multiple CEO put it to me recently: "Thank God he doesn't visit supermarkets in the same way he does restaurants!"
Yet, judging by the hundreds of letters and e-mails he receives every week, there are also many who admire his no-nonsense style. "I wish I had had the nerve to say that," is typical of a nervous diner's reaction after a bad experience in an expensive, upmarket eaterie.
Causing an enormous stir
Winner's first restaurant review, as he tells you with obvious pride, caused "an enormous stir and became the talking point of the chattering classes". Thus, as the foreword to his new book proclaims, when he enters a restaurant or hotel, to say everyone is on red alert is to put it mildly.
Typical of his egotistical style is one of his more notable quotes: "A team effort is a lot of people doing what I say." Quite.
Indeed, interviewing the tell it as it is' Winner is quite an experience. All the trappings of business success are there. There's an enormous paper-strewn desk overshadowed by a giant oil painting. There's a battery of official-looking internal telephones situated conveniently close by. And Winner makes his intentions clear to the visiting journalist when he switches on a mini tape machine.
So given his legendary opinions of the restaurant world, what about grocery? Is he a supermarket shopper, for example: "No" comes the quickfire answer with a snarl of disgust. "Can't stand big stores." A predictable start, but perhaps I should have known better than to have asked the question.
But what, I asked the self-confessed eccentric millionaire, did he think about the grocery industry in general?
After regaling me with a complaint about the meat he had been served the previous evening ("You would never have known it was lamb from a blind test"), he promptly dismisses the quality of British food as "generally good, but far less good than it was in the fifties".
His justification for this opinion is equally direct. "In those days, nothing was force-fed. Food was not chemicalised and injected. There were no salmon or cod farms. The taste was very real. The old-fashioned meat and two veg was a thoroughly good thing. Nowadays you can't see the veg. There are a couple of decorated half Brussels sprouts which are just used as plate decoration." The words rattled out in machine gun fashion.
But why does he believe that the quality of our food has deteriorated during the past half century? "Things have changed because more people are buying what is laughingly known as the more expensive food. And in order to make it less expensive it is factory farmed, whether it is an apple or a potato."
They trust me very much'
He adds: "To meet this greater demand because of greater wealth, manufacturers are having to produce more and keep their profit ratios up by chemically helping the food. This does not help the taste."
The aggressive style softens as he admits with a warm smile that he was fortunate enough to have been born to "quite rich parents".
And there are even more surprises on the way when the scourge of the catering classes admits: "I know nothing about food. But, from the age of five I was lucky enough to have been taken into wonderful restaurants. And if you study something by experience, day after day, you know what is good and bad.
"It is largely my opinion, of course. What I don't know is what goes into the food. I couldn't tell you the constituent ingredients of a sauce or anything of that complexity.
"But I don't think the public, on the whole, want to know about that. They want a jolly account of an eccentric millionaire wandering around the world describing what he thinks of food. And I find that they trust me very much."
Lamenting the passing of many family grocers, butchers and greengrocers, he accuses supermarkets of "downgrading" the quality of food in the cause of bringing more of it to the masses.
Gazing wistfully out of his first floor study to the spectacular, palm fringed garden below, he continues: "It used to be the case of the family shop  Sid the grocer or Betty the butcher  getting the food from the local land or fish from local rivers and the sea. Of course, that is uneconomic in today's world. But at least we didn't have deep freezing of food in those days. That is a disaster. The minute food is deep frozen, it is gone."
So does he own a freezer: "No I don't," he snorts.
Undeterred, he steps back on to the nostalgia route, adding: "In my youth, a grocer was a grocer. The grocer today is a supermarket that sells hundreds of different things brought in by great containers. God knows how old the food is. The word fresh' is the most misused word in the world."
But what about the chains who trade on a freshness image? His face crinkles in annoyance and the reply is rapid: "Well, it's all nonsense." Having said that, Winner does at least admit that supermarkets have helped to bring produce to people who would otherwise not get it. But this is only a break from the critical style. He goes back on the attack with the comment: "A lot of people can now afford smoked salmon who could not afford it when I was young. But they are eating rubbish. Nowadays it is pumped up salmon that is full of fat. However, people don't know they are eating rubbish because they never ate the fish that was really good."
We have to live in the real world'
And he goes on: "I realise, however, that we have to live in the real world. British food is required in vast quantities to go to a vast number of people who can now afford to buy food of greater variety."
Bemoaning the absence of good, old-fashioned specialist food stores in London other than butchers like R Allen and the Lidgate company, he adds: "Good fish is very difficult to get, and you can't find a fellow selling potatoes that came out of the ground the week before."
Admitting that he went to a vegetarian school, although rarely lost an opportunity to "escape to the village for sausage and chips", Winner concedes that organically produced food "tastes a bit better".
But he swiftly returns to attack mode to show that he can be equally forthright about GM food, despite his obvious liking for things organic. "The idea that Africa should starve because the Africans should not be given genetically modified food is absolutely pathetic. I would eat GM food. I am eating so much food with chemicals in it, a bit more or less makes no bloody difference. After all, pure food is more or less unavailable."
And venting his spleen on consumer attitudes to food scares, he adds: "Our bodies are actually quite resilient. Foods which may be full of chemicals, and which I may not like, are not killing people en masse. I don't see them collapsing outside restaurants, and trucks coming to take the dead bodies away."
Did he eat British beef during the mad cow disease scare? "Of course I did, although I'm quite sure my supplier got his meat from very selective sources."
But Winner, despite his perceptions of the UK food industry, is a realist. "It's one thing for people like me wanting pure food, untouched by chemicals or anything except human hands. But that is unrealistic for the world in which we live.Having said all that, I'm very glad that I was born early enough to see the other world."
Winner would be booed off the stage were he ever asked to speak at the IGD annual convention. But then, he probably wouldn't accept the invitation.
n The Winner Guide to Dining and Wining is published by Robson Books at £8.99.
{{ANALYSIS }}
No comments yet