Lunch with Ruth Rogers, founder of the River Café

To walk across the floor of the River Café with Ruth Rogers is to make peace with the fact that progress will be slow. Not long after meeting the spry, 75-year-old co-founder of one of the most influential British restaurants in history, I realise that, for her, the blue-carpeted expanse of its famous main dining room is really a catwalk of seemingly infinite connections and acquaintances.

‘Oh hello,’ she says, stopping to hug and greet a lunching couple while I loiter awkwardly behind her. Next, she is checking in on another table, as they are poised to. And then, having set off to find a quieter spot for our interview, we are suddenly leading two sharp-suited men — one an old friend of hers; the other a former member of the Italian government — on an impromptu tour of the restaurant’s newish stand-alone shop.