Ad hoc stalls and vans were the precursors of the vast fast-food industry that exists today

Ad hoc stalls and vans were the precursors of the vast fast-food industry that exists today. Food seconds out of the pan that scorches your fingers, that may - if modesty allows - come wrapped in a napkin, but with no means of eating it other than your hands.And street food is fast It exists for the eat-and-run crowd. Let shops take care of tins and jars, raw vegetables and uncooked meat The street is about frying, roasting and grilling. To stand at its base, hands cupped around a warm crepe oozing chocolate sauce, is sheer happiness. There is no curing a food addict who will remember all the sights, shows and culture a city has to offer principally because of a hot dog stall on the corner. The lights in Regent Street during the pre-Christmas rush? Of course I remember. The acrid smell of smoke from a charcoal brazier roasting chestnuts, blended with the exhaust of a bus With street food you get the rough with the smooth.

By all means walk up to that deep-fat fryer where doughnuts are sizzling, but then walk away with your trophy to face reality. Street food is immediate, demanding to be eaten. To stand at the base of the Eiffel Tower, neck craned in awe of its lofty ascent, is pleasurable. I'm not opening them for business reasons but because something inside me finds these projects thrilling. It's the best, the most exciting way of spending my life.Getting the restaurant experience right is a great art form In everything I do, I'm trying to provide a style of life. I've tried to make better ways of life available, to say: "Look I've been very lucky, I've seen an awful lot of things, I have a certain amount of talent and I can put things in front of you that you may like." It sounds incredibly pretentious when I say it like that - and I hate pretentiousness - but all I'm doing is offering things people haven't been offered before.Aurora is at The Great Eastern Hotel, Liverpool Street, London EC2 (0171- 618 7000). Nothing gives me more pleasure than to go into my restaurants and see people having a good time. Inevitably, of course, I want to please people - it would be a very odd person who didn't want to be liked.

I would never say I was entirely responsible for projects, but even so, I take criticism worryingly personally. I should be used to it, but if you're an artist, a designer and architect, and someone says they don't like your building or the colour of the walls, you are fractionally wounded - unless you are an entirely over-confident person, which I'm not. But when this, or any restaurant, is up and going, it's out of my direct control.I'm the captain of the team and I perform a very useful role. In New York, Stockholm and London, we have a lot of activities going on at the moment, and I've taken a major role in each. Aurora, the grand dining room of the Great Eastern Hotel in London, opened this week and it is the opportunity to produce very fine cooking in an incredibly glamorous room.

I come up with the idea of the type of food we're going to serve, the atmosphere and design, but restaurants are a combination of skills. The business is a brand that happens to bear my name, but I don't feel branded myself. My name isn't on them, and what I've tried to do is create a collection of restaurants that have their own personalities They are not just about me I'm embarrassed to be talking as if they were Originally each is in my image. There is a certain degree of self-indulgence in how I'm spending the latter part of my life Sometimes I behave like a spoilt child. I have a determination to get things right and get really frustrated when they aren't Then I can appear angry.

But I don't pretend to be things I'm not, and generally I'm fairly well organised, content, happy, energetic. I would very much care if people thought I was unpleasant or dishonest or money-grabbing because I don't think I am. Underneath it all I'm really quite a pleasant person.It surprises me that I am identified with the restaurants. I do what I do entirely for pleasure and it doesn't feel like work I do it rather than play golf or sail yachts. I tell myself I must stop travelling round the world, but it doesn't happen. Blue shirts don't show the ash as much as white ones, that's why I wear them. I have suits made for me because of my awkward shape, but although I like clothes as design objects, I'm not passionate about them - if I wasn't fat and old I'd probably take more interest. I'm 68.