Soon he was working in Hong Kong at the now-defunct Wall Street Journal Asia and later the South China Morning Post, where for more than six years he was the foreign editor and associate editor. During this time he interviewed the likes of Lee Kuan Yew and Nelson Mandela. It was not until he was unexpectedly let go that Vines returned to the UK and joined Bloomberg in 1995, initially as markets editor. But when the company announced it was looking for a restaurant critic in 2004, Vines put himself forward. “I simply put my hand up for the post and volunteered that I had covered food and dining while at the South China Morning Post,” he told an interviewer in 2020. “I hadn’t, but I got the job and have been grateful of it ever since.”