Enormous.

Fergus Henderson, Trevor Gulliver, and education ...

At the heart of their relationship – which began through an introduction from an olive oil seller and, inevitably, a long lunch – is a shared faith in the sustaining joys of life. Both men are steeped in what you might call the rigour of gastronomic pleasure. The articles of St John’s faith are all about constancy and conviction, doing good things extremely well. When they first opened the restaurant, with its menu of tripes and bone marrow and welsh rarebit and addictive custard, they were accused of being 200 years out of date, which they took as an enormous compliment.

One of their key beliefs is that a great restaurant should insist on making a human shape to the day, beginning early with the baking of bread, and ending late with a final glass of something special. In an age of working lunches and clean eating, they have held fast to that principle. As a young man Henderson studied architecture – both his parents were architects – and he carried a profound understanding of structure into his eventual vocation. The foundations of that, he suggests to me as he works, were boyhood holidays to the Dordogne, where each morning the family would crack open the Michelin guide and ask the only two questions that ever really mattered: “Where shall we have lunch?” and “Where shall we have dinner?”