You may have heard of the Lunar Men, that outrageously high-achieving 18th-century group of friends that included potter Josiah Wedgwood, Charles Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus and the Joseph Priestley who discovered a little thing called oxygen. As their joint achievements reveal, peer pressure works.

I thought about them the other night at Coi in San Francisco. Coi is as improbable as the steam engine (invented by another Lunar Man, James Watt). It’s a small place on an unsavoury stretch of Broadway and all the people working there – from chef Daniel Patterson to the sommelier to the front-of-house staff – are just a little loony themselves. I mean that not as a compliment but as a rave. These are people who give such a damn about what they do that it’s joyful to be among them. It alters how you hear, see, feel. And taste? I’ve eaten at most of the biggies, including the Fat Duck and Per Se, but now I’ve fallen for Coi and the others don’t matter anymore.