Pack up your truffles in your old kit bag: Alyn Williams' CHEFstock 2016

‘Mark Askew was a member, Gordon used to come along; Richard Corrigan and Mark Hix, too,' he continues. 'They were all regular members and used to socialise there, so we used to do collaborations. We did these four dinners, one with Rowley Leigh, me, Richard Corrigan and Jeremy Lee; one with Anthony Bourdain and Fergus Henderson and one with Jason Atherton and Gordon. They were private events with thirty or forty private members.’

It seems, then, that takeovers were at first purely exclusive and only at members clubs or institutions such at The Groucho Club. Outside of these playgrounds of the culinary elite things appeared to be quite competitive. Recipes were secrets and the way a chef ran their brigade remained firmly behind closed doors.

‘Back in those days it was quite a lot like that, very much a closed shop,’ Alyn recalls. ‘You would be protective of what you were doing. It seems stupid now as all you have to do is Google and you can find anyone’s recipe, so it's pointless being protective anymore. It’s almost gone full-circle, it’s quite liberating!

‘Over the last fifteen to twenty years or so we’ve become more of a community, and what we’ve found is that we’re all alright and we all get on,' he adds. 'And we all respect the hard work each of us has put in to get to where we are. You’re more inspired when you get to talk to other people about what they are doing. There’s no plagiarism, you just learn new techniques, and those are handed down anyway – there aren’t many people who are the pioneers of new cooking methods. What you do is take it and adapt it into your own thing.’

This upbeat outlook made me think – what if the doors had remained closed? Where would British cuisine be now? Alyn is convinced that the sharing of ideas, developments and innovative thinking are the major reasons behind the culinary explosion of the last decade, both in restaurants and food-related media. A commercial kitchen is almost like a second home. If you can imagine the hours, graft and passion that are imparted not only on the team, but the space itself, the four walls of a chef's caboose is an extension of themselves. To welcome new chefs into this space is not only a pleasure for the diners frequenting the restaurant, but also a unique opportunity to influence the brigade involved.

These benefits for both chef and consumer are something which Alyn acknowledges. ‘That’s part of the reason we do it,’ he says. ‘A lot of the guests who come to the events are regulars and know us and the events that we do. But this is part of the reason why we don’t have London chefs. If you live in London and dine out there then good food is something that is easily accessible. But you're not necessarily going to dine out in Liverpool or Lancashire or Helsinki. So one of the reasons is to give the people that come here often something a little bit different.

‘It’s all happened very organically. I love doing it and it’s great for my kitchen team – they come out of the whole experience buzzing. Each week I take three or four of my chefs and pair them up with a guest chef, so over the week they all get to work with at least one of them.’