As we walked along the short passageway that leads from the kitchen to the Number Twelve restaurant in the Ambassadors Hotel in Bloomsbury, central London, its previously loquacious chef Santino Busciglio stopped talking, put his head in his hands, and groaned, “Oh, no.”

We had just passed a wall on which, as in so many kitchens, were pinned photographs and names of the main national newspaper critics so that waiting staff would recognise them under whichever name they had booked. When I asked Busciglio about this he replied: “Well, we have to be prepared.” It was then I revealed that I, too, was a restaurant critic, prompting Busciglio’s embarrassment.