Egon Ronay was an inspiration to Poles and others. Ronay who died today aged 94, arrived in Britain a penniless refugee from Hungary and devoted the rest of his life to fighting bad post-war British cooking.

A food critic legend, Ronay was born in Budapest to the son of a prominent restaurateur who owned five establishments in the Hungarian capital and was the city's fifth-biggest taxpayer, but emigrated alone fom communist Hungary after World War II and opened a French restaurant in Knightsbridge called the Marquee in 1946.

In the 1950s he founded the famous eating-out guides that bore his name and which awarded rosettes to the best establishments.

Ronay may have minced his meat, but he did not mince his words. He could be scathing about that which he did not like. Most airline food was “pre-meditated gastronomic murder” ; motorway service-station meals were “pig swill”. He was no kinder about his rival guides. The Michelin Guide, he observed, was designed to appeal to snobs who delighted in its French chauvinism. The AA Guide, by contrast, simply showed “insufficient gastronomic expertise”.