Banner’s is closing and, as I walked out of the door after Juliette, the owner, had called me in to give me the news, I found my thoughts turning to cherished institutions whose imminent disappearance would have caused me less distress. It was the usual sort of things — the Royal Opera House, Tottenham Hotspur, Gyles Brandreth and The Ritz.
It’s a little over 30 years since I stood with Juliette Banner and her then-partner Andy Kershaw in an abandoned kebab shop in Crouch End, as she imagined how the diner might be structured. A zinc bar, stone and oak floors; simple wooden tables serving a menu with — in addition to full English and Manx kippers — a strong Caribbean and south-east Asian presence, without flirting with the then modish notion of culinary “fusion”.
