New destination for foodies: Britain. (No kidding.)

It used to be a backwater on the European culinary scene, a drab landscape of third-rate restaurants and soggy vegetables. While people visited France, Spain, and Italy for the food, they visited Britain for anything but.

Not any more. London is rapidly evolving into one of the most exciting places in the world to dine, say top chefs and food critics - even the French. And while the English countryside may still lag behind the capital, it's no longer just fish 'n' chips and mushy peas there either.

"We have such a diversity of restaurants in London now - no other city can beat us on variety," says Tom Aikens, a chef at the leading edge of a new culinary elan here.

"The standards of cooking have gone up," he says, as diners in his restaurant sample anchovy beignets, fennel gazpacho, and a pea-themed starter that looks like a Jackson Pollock on the plate. "The food has improved, the produce has got better, the suppliers and growers have improved."

The industry is sitting up and taking notice. One recent authoritative survey of the best places to eat in the world, which polled hundreds of top international chefs, restaurateurs, and food critics, gave Britain no fewer than 14 of the top 50, 11 of them in London. (The No. 1 was the Fat Duck, a venue west of London famed for raucous creations like sardine-flavored sorbet and snail porridge.)

The restaurant market is growing at almost 10 percent a year, according to Ella Johnston, editor of Restaurant magazine, which published the top 50 survey. More than a third of money spent on food in Britain now goes on eating out, she says.

And the food scene's growth is not just measurable in new premises alone. TV schedules are packed with celebrity chefs and cooking shows. The top five bestselling nonfiction manuals in Britain last week were all cookbooks. Chefs are feted as no other category of celebrity apart from popstars and footballers.

There are obvious reasons for the trend. A more prosperous society has more cash to burn on luxuries like fine dining. An immigration boom has expanded the options and demand for ethnic cuisine.

Longer hours at the office, and the rise of dual-income families, have also cut down the time available for cooking. A generation ago, a restaurant was for special occasions. Now it's a regular event.

"Britons are getting more epicurean, embracing celebration as a way to let go of the stress of life, and the restaurant is part of this," says Raymond Blanc, a Frenchman who has been cooking for the British for more than 30 years and is now one of the country's foremost chefs.

"A restaurant is now part of the lifestyle, a part of a city as much as a university or a museum," says Mr. Blanc, whose Maison au Quat' Saisons was ranked 28th in the survey. "People have more disposable income and choose to spend it on food, not in the shopping basket but in the restaurant. They pay a great deal of money to have a special moment in their life."

Page: 1 | 2