The trattoria revolution was the biggest leap forward in Britain's culinary development since Escoffier. This important chronicle of our social history is long overdue

A deeply enjoyable social history to salivate over

Part cultural history, part biography, part sixties memoir, "The Spaghetti Tree" is a picture of the era when modern restaurant culture first emerged in Britain.This book tells the story of the transformation of Britain's food and restaurant scene, from the days when eating out was a luxury for the middle classes only, and most of us believed spaghetti did grow on trees, to today when there are three Italian dishes in Britain's ten favourite meals.In the last fifty years, the Italian influence has changed not just the food we eat in Britain, but our ideas about the values of simple cooking, quality ingredients, and freshness. But the principal reason why Italian food first became popular in Britain has been forgotten - except perhaps by a few who were there at the time. When Mario Cassandro and Franco Lagattolla opened La Trattoria Terrazza in Soho in 1959, they were the first in Britain to serve the kind of simple food to be found in a neighbourhood trattoria in Italy.La Terrazza became the most popular and fashionable restaurant in London - the new place where the artists, writers, actors, journalists, politicians, and musicians who were to transform Britain in the 1960s, merged together.

At the same time, the Terrazza changed the way restaurants looked, as Mario and Franco's designer Enzo Apicella threw out the traditional carpets, wallpaper and candelabra of 1950 restaurants and brought in the intimate downlights, tiled floors and white plaster walls which came to be known as Trattoria style.When Terrazza manager Alvaro Maccioni left to open his own place, the scandal made the headlines and the trattoria revolution started to spread across London. Other young Italians jumped on the bandwagon, opening their own restaurants with Mario and Franco's design, formula and menus - and sometimes with their staff and their customers.Modern British European restaurant menus and much of our restaurant design has evolved from the Mario and Franco model, and fifty years later, it is clear than Mario and Franco were the most influential restaurateurs, and Enzo Apicella the most influential restaurant designer, of the British 20th Century. The author was a London restaurateur in the 1960s and 70s, and his colourful and fascinating story is given depth both from his personal experiences and from interviews with many of the leading characters of the Trattoria Revolution.For fifty years, Britain has enjoyed a deepening love affair with Italian cooking, an affair which was born in the first trattorias when Italian food was new, fashionable and delicious, which grew and strengthened because it was different, full of colour and variety, and finally blossomed later at home, as we learned it was also healthy, inexpensive and easy to prepare.

And this love affair started at Mario & Franco's Trattoria Terrazza.

Born in Ceylon, (Sri Lanka) Alasdair Sutherland was educated at Tonbridge and in Italy and Ireland. He was a London restaurateur in the 1970s and his later career was in international public relations agencies. The Spaghetti Tree is his first book.
Alasdair trained at The Hotel Portmeirion and then worked in public relations in 1960s London, while moonlighting as a waiter in several Chelsea bistros. In 1971 he and his brother Robin opened Small's Café on the Fulham Road, the first Rock'n'Roll revival restaurant, and then Small's Restaurant on Knightsbridge Green two years later. Their partnership expanded with the Old Compton Wine Bar and Maunkberry's night club.
Alasdair then returned to the PR agency business, and for the next thirty years worked for three of the world's largest PR firms, first in the Far East and then across Europe. In 2001 he was President of the International Public Relations Association.
Alasdair wrote on life inside the restaurant business for London Life in the 1970s and was the restaurant critic and a regular columnist of the Hong Kong Tatler in the 1980s. He and his wife Felicity live in West London.