In the fickle world of restaurants, sticking to a vision takes guts It is nearly 30 years since St John opened in a former smokehouse, just to the north of the City of London.
Born in 1888 into a poor farming family in rural Missouri, Dale Carnegie left school in his teens and rather than attend university, he spent years selling bacon and soap to people living on isolated ranches.
I take bacon, it must be cured, and it must be very smoky, and I create a sauce on the side that is maple syrup, but it has to be fake maple syrup, not that fancy Canadian stuff, and some sriracha.
The smoke went up from an Etna of peat in front of him, played round the notches of the chimney-crook, struck against the salt-box, and got lost among the flitches.
In the upgraded restaurants, diners can use touchscreen kiosks to customize their burgers into millions of permutations, such as adding extra sauce and bacon to a Big Mac.