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Medium White Kidney BeanEnglish novelist L. Somerset Maugham is credited with saying that to eat well in England, you must have breakfast three times a day. For centuries on the continent, diners were indulging in coq au vin, creamy fettucine alfredo and spicy paella, while back in Britain they were left to face bland beef, mushy peas and soggy pudding. The island that had conquered most of world seemed incapable of conquering the kitchen. Yet today, London stands at the epicenter of the world's food landscape, and what was once a culinary wasteland is now the third leading city in the world- — after Tokyo and Paris — in the number of Michelin-starred -restaurants (45 in all, with Gordon Ramsay's at 68 Royal Hospital Road racking up three Michelin stars. In a truly staggering statistic, 116 restaurants throughout the United Kingdom have been awarded Michelin stars.) What was responsible for the dramatic turnaround? In London's culinary Dark Ages (the 1980s) before Ramsay got nasty, before Jamie Oliver got naked and before Nigella Lawson got her own cooking show, it seemed that the only way to get a really good meal in London — other than breakfast — was to opt for Indian food (which always has been top-notch) or to shell out major pounds at Le Gavroche, where the father-son team of Albert and Michel Roux have worked their magic for years. Finally, several of the city's top chefs decided that they had had it with the contempt shown by their counterparts across the channel in Paris and the lack of faith shown by their own countrymen. Chefs Marco Pierre White, Nico Ladenis and Richard Corrigan began opening restaurants (Mirabelle, -Criterion, the Oak Room and the Belvedere for White; Nico's at 90 for Ladenis; and The Lindsey House for -Corrigan) that got the -attention of foodies from New York to New Delhi. They were aided in their efforts not by another chef, but by an entrepreneur, Terence Conran, whose series of stylish restaurants, from Orrery to Le Pont de la Tour to the Bluebird Café, began cropping up all over the capital and appearing regularly in the pages of the top food magazines. London has never looked back. Today, a new generation of Young Turks is storming the city's restaurant scene: chefs Tony Fleming of Axis, the hip new restaurant at One Aldwych Hotel, and Aiden Byrne, who has single-handedly reinvented the kitchen at one of London's most -venerable dining spots, the Grill at the Dorchester. I had a chance to eat with both chefs during a recent visit to London and to get their thoughts on the city's exciting food scene. Just what has brought about this revolution in modern British cooking? Fleming, who trained with celebrity chefs Richard Neat and Marco Pierre White before becoming executive chef at Axis in 2007, and Byrne, 36, the Liverpool-born Wunderkind who took over at the Dorchester Grill a year-and-a-half ago, agree that the most important change in the London food scene is the newfound love of British produce. That doesn't mean a re-invention of traditional dishes such as fish and chips, steak and kidney pie, and ”bubble and squeak,“ but rather chefs working directly with local suppliers to celebrate the best produce the British Isles have to offer." Seasonally, British produce is as good as that from any other part of the world,“ Fleming says. That realization has meant an end to imports from France and the rest of continent, and a resulting focus on the best British produce at any given time: asparagus in May, strawberries and tomatoes in August, English and Irish farmhouse cheeses, Jersey Royal potatoes from the Channel Islands, crabs in the summer from England's south coast and prawns from Dublin Bay, and grouse from the north of England and Scotland from August to December. Not to mention local fish such as John Dory, turbot and brill, which Fleming says ”can be caught yesterday and in my kitchen today.“ Fleming, who makes regular visits to sprawling Borough Market on the south bank of the Thames in search of the freshest -produce in Britain, prefers his -ingredients to be, whenever possible, local, sustainable and organic. At Axis, that results in dishes such as braised lamb breast, sautéed cabbage and roast langouwstines, Middle White pork pie, buttery grain mustard mash and pickled -cucumber, and blackberry and pear soufflé with blackberry sorbet, which are neither overworked nor complicated. They follow Fleming's -guiding principle — ”keep it British; keep it simple.“ The legendary Dorchester Hotel, situated across from Hyde Park, has become such a bastion of culinary excellence that it keeps three first-class restaurants filled with satisfied patrons — the glamorous China Tang, the newest establishment of celebrated French chef Alain Ducasse, and the recently refurbished Dorchester Grill. It is the last, presided over by Byrne, that has London and international food critics especially excited. Byrne, author of the book Made in Great Britain, echoes Fleming's opinion that it is the excellent British produce that has elevated the country's — and especially London's — restaurants.”Just look at what we have here,“ he says. ”The finest beef from Scotland, oysters from east England and Northern Ireland, potatoes from Jersey, cheeses from Wiltshire and Somerset (counties in southern England).”There is nothing we can't grow, nothing we can't get. Byrne can often be found as early as 3:30 a.m. at New Covent Garden Market, selecting mushrooms, baby artichokes and borlotti beans before shopping for meat at Smithfield Market and fish at Billingsgate. His passion for all things British shows up on the Grill's menu, with poached west coast turbot with razor clams, spring vegetables and lemon thyme butter; Denham Castle lamb with fennel risotto and confit garlic; and fillet of angus beef with braised Devon snails, parsley pearl barley, bone marrow and smoked bacon. Despite his numerous accolades, Byrne thinks his greatest accomplishment has been ”making fine dining -accessible to the masses.“ The sun might have set on the British Empire, but it is shining brightly on the state of British cuisine.