Best known, perhaps, as a journalist, Stephen Vines also manages a small chain of canteens, coffee shops and bars; is a director of The Pan Handler kitchen equipment shop in Prince's Building; and is an enthusiastic and capable cook.
Given that he is already a published author - on subjects including the Middle East, colonial Hong Kong and investing in stock markets - it is surprising that Food Gurus: 20 People Who Have Changed the Way We Eat and Think About Food is his first published about one of his great passions.
Passion is something those 20 people all have in common, along with grit and determination, but otherwise they are a diverse bunch, ranging from Ray Kroc, the architect of fast-food giant McDonald's, to Carlo Petrini, the founder of the Slow Food movement, and "ethical chef" Alice Waters.
"This selection is pretty subjective," Vines admits. "I just got interested in why people are eating the way they are today, and who are the seminal figures in creating the food culture. Everybody in this book is a fanatic. Mostly they are either chefs - who start their working days at 4am and end at midnight and hardly ever sleep - or food writers such as Elizabeth David, who single-handedly set out to introduce Mediterranean food to an austere, grey, depressed England after the second world war."
Three gurus fall outside those categories - Kroc, canned food mogul Henry Heinz and nutritionist Dr Robert Atkins.
Vines dislikes McDonald's hamburgers, seldom opens a can and doesn't believe in the Atkins diet, but he largely keeps those judgments of taste which pepper his conversation out of the book. Many of his subjects are controversial in one way or another, and in each case, he summarises both sides of the argument.