Gordon Ramsay was in the headlines again today and unsurprisingly it was bad news again for the chef.
For last night saw the announcement of the San Pellegrino 50 Best Restaurants Awards and Gordon Ramsay's three-Michelin-starred flagship restaurant on London's Royal Hospital Road wasn't on the list. In fact, despite being in 13th place last year, it didn't even make it into the Top 100.
The consensus among the 800-strong judging panel of food writers, restaurant critics and chefs was apparently that Ramsay is "spreading himself too thin" to be included.
The national media has unsurprisingly jumped at Ramsay's exclusion (especially given that erstwhile protégé and former best mate Marcus Wareing made a dramatic entry at 52 winning the Breakthrough Award) and I can't help but wonder whether he hasn't been used to grab the necessary column inches to promote the awards.
Granted, finding Ramsay behind the stove at Royal Hospital Road is probably about as rare as a sentence without a swearword on one of his shows but are Thomas Keller (six and 12), Pierre Gagnaire (nine); and Jean Georges Vongerichten (19) always cooking at their restaurants?
Despite Ramsay's wide range of commitments outside of his kitchen, it simply cannot be denied that his restaurant remains one of the top dining destinations in the UK and no less of a culinary experience than Hakkasan, Nobu and St John, all of which made it into the Top 50.
Ramsay himself was apparently unfazed by the news, with a spokeswoman quoted in the Daily Telegraph insisting "he takes all these sort of surveys with a pinch of salt".
In response, the Harden's, true to form, ask: "Does it ever occur to the Ramsay camp that if they stopped talking nonsense, they might get a better press? Ramsay has a clear record of not taking all these surveys 'with a pinch of salt'."
The Times Giles Coren meanwhile points out the irrelevance of the list, while The Observer's Jay Rayner seems to defend it and fine dining altogether.
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I agree with the author's thrust. Restaurant Gordon Ramsay remains my top gastronomic destination in the UK. I have eaten at all the UK two and three starred restaurants and Ramsay's remains my favourite. Definitely much better than Wareing at the Berkeley.
Hi. I'm not quite sure what the “true to form” refers to in your reference to Harden’s. We cover Ramsay a lot because he is London’s most prominent chef (by number of top restaurants, as well as by column-inches), and there's a lot of Ramsay news about at the moment.
If the ‘true to form’ means that we‘ve found ourselves commenting on the Ramsay PR machine a lot of late, well, guilty as charged. The Ramsay PR-machine is nowadays so often transparently self-serving that it is, in our view, arguably doing his image a positive disservice.
The point were were making was that a little more humility – and a little less bragadoccio – might well rebound to his credit. That is a valid comment, and, we think, a fair one too. Perhaps that’s what you meant by “true to form”?
Not that you'd realise it from your snippet, incidentally, but we did go on to provide details to back up our point, demonstrating quite clearly that Ramsay does not take surveys with a pinch of salt. Well, not when it suits him, anyway.
Thanks Richard. By "true to form" I was indeed referring to your regular comments on Ramsay and nothing further than that.