Russell Norman changed the way that Londoners dine out forever

IT is difficult to overstate what Russell Norman, the restaurateur who died on November 23 aged 57, did for London dining - and in turn, for dining across Britain. The list isn't endless, but long enough.

- David Ellis

There are the headline acts - he introduced Britain to the idea that sharing plates might mean more than tapas; he revitalised the Negroni; he rid us, for a while, of reservations - but it was the subtler things, too. Those filament bulbs everywhere? Very Russell Norman.

Wine in tumblers? So Russell - and all the better if they came out of the Duralex factory. He championed lampshades, hated any light brighter than a candle, and made bare brick walls a feature. He worked in flickering oranges and yellows, in twilight.

For his latest opening, the smash hit of Brutto, he spent hours and hours searching for suppliers, scouring markets and auction sites. He had completed eBay. Norman was a restaurateur interested in restaurants as a whole the food mattered, yes, but he used a meal as an excuse for theatre, and dressed his sets extremely well. It helped he had excellent taste. Of his hobbies, he once told the Standard: "I like nothing more than trawling the internet for the perfect vinegary green copper lantern to go outside a place, or finding the right frosted glass." You believed him.

Norman's fame came, mostly, from the success of Polpo, the Venetian-inspired restaurant which he opened alongside Richard Beatty in 2009. Polpo proved such an overwhelming success that it pushed everywhere else in London to up its game, helping turn the city into one of the world's greatest for food.