Recently in Marcus Wareing Category

Brett Graham's two-Michelin-starred restaurant the Ledbury in London has won yet another award after being named the top restaurant in the UK in the Sunday Times Food List.

The award comes after the Ledbury recently topped both the Zagat and Harden's surveys for best food in London and after Graham earlier this year won the prestigious Chef of the Year Catey.

The Sunday Times Food List is based on food quality alone, chosen by 8,000 restaurant goers from across the UK and compiled by Harden's Restaurant Guide in conjunction with Rémy Martin.

Graham commented: "It's a huge honour to top the list, especially as it comes from such a broad base of customers. This is a testament to everyone in the extremely talented and energetic young team here at the Ledbury."

Raymond Blanc's Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons in Great Milton, Oxfordshire, came second in the Food List while last year's winner, Gidleigh Park, placed third. 

Gidleigh Park also won the Rémy Martin X.O. Excellence Award for Best All Round Restaurant, while Marcus Wareing at the Berkeley picked up the Coeur de Cognac Award for Best Dessert, and Heston Blumenthal's Dinner at the Mandarin Oriental received the Rémy Martin V.S.O.P Best Newcomer Award.

Other findings from the Sunday Times Food List, which will publish the top 100 restaurants in Britain in full on Sunday (30 October), include that half of the top 100 restaurants are outside London (up from 40% last year); while Asian restaurants have fallen by half; and there are 31 new entries.

Jay Rayner has called off his search for the perfect BBQ after dining at the World's End pub in Brighton.

The "dirty food" served by chef John Hargate features "meaty" ribs which are "proper, thick cut numbers" and "properly sauced", according to The Observer's food critic. He even discovered the closest thing to a Texan delicacy: a cream cheese stuffed jalapeno wrapped in sausage meat and bacon which is "outrageously moreish".

Writing for the Daily Telegraph, Matthew Norman is equally delighted, having dined at Jason Atherton's new venture, Pollen Street Social.

The former Gordon Ramsay chef's culinary expertise creates "solid gold in the mouth" in the form of delights such as oyster ice cream, escabeche of quail and the tiramisu with hot mocha-chocolate sauce being dubbed "one of the finest puds" Norman has ever tasted.

Ambience also proved key for the critics, with the Sunday Telegraph's Zoe Williams noting the St Pancras Renaissance hotel's super-high ceilings renders the Gilbert Scott too big and airy to feel comfortable, while The Independent's John Walsh gives Pebble Beach restaurant at Barton on Sea top marks for its atmosphere.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Independent on Sunday's Amol Rajan finds the feel at Gidleigh Park "abysmal", slamming it as "staid, oppressive and stuck in the 1990s".

Back in London, the Sunday Times' AA Gill finally gets around to eating at L'Anima to find that it does food for "corporates" better than expected, while the Metro's Marina O'Loughlin says tapas bar José's real excitement comes from its daily specials board - but its tiny dining room won't please everyone.

Gordon Ramsay Holdings (GRH) is to continue to operate its restaurant at Claridge's but the hotel's owner, the Maybourne Hotel Group, has extended the contract by only 12 months.

The celebrity chef, who has run the former Michelin-starred restaurant at the five-star Mayfair hotel since 2001, was widely tipped not to have the 10-year lease renewed after Maybourne closed his previous restaurants at the Connaught and the Berkeley.

"While the GRH contract was due for renewal this year, it has been agreed to extend it into 2012," said a spokeswoman for Maybourne.

GRH's latest accounts revealed that Gordon Ramsay at Claridge's saw a 6.3% decline in footfall in the year to 31 August 2010. The restaurant, which was previously run by Mark Sargeant, lost its Michelin star in 2009 after seven years.

GRH previously operated four restaurants at Maybourne's London hotels including Angela Hartnett at Connaught; and Pétrus and Boxwood Café at the Berkeley. None of the restaurants' contracts were renewed upon expiry and are now occupied by Hélène Darroze; Marcus Wareing and Pierre Koffmann respectively.

Paul Foster, head chef at Tuddenham Mill in Suffolk, is one of the country's best young chefs who is right on the gastronomic cutting edge, according to Jay Rayner.

The Observer's food critic says Foster, one of this year's Acorn award winners, is cooking modern, well balanced food that is very much worth travelling for.

"His ideas are controlled. His flavour combinations make sense. The smartest bits of kitchen kit are used not simply because he's got a new toy but to add something," he says. "If you want a plate of food that shouts 2011, which is the word "now" fashioned from calories, go to Tuddenham Mill."

Meanwhile the Sunday Times' AA Gill finds the Gilbert Scott, the new restaurant from Marcus Wareing, is "depressing and like eating a home-economics history project".

He says: "This restoration or reconstruction of both building and menu is a mule born gelded, a sterile exercise that bears nothing, fires blanks, leads to nothing but more of the past. It's an exercise in sentimental hindsight."

Writing for the Sunday Telegraph, Zoe Williams says Nando's bears the hallmarks of a kitchen "that does nothing but chicken, that knows the bird inside out, that hasn't dried out a bit of poultry since a freak lapse of concentration in 1995".

The Guardian's John Lanchester likes the food at Martin Blunos's Crown Social in Cardiff but adds that the location doesn't match the chef's cooking, while the Independent's Tracey MacLeod is impressed with Kateh, a new Persian restaurant on one of the loveliest canal-side streets in leafy Little Venice.

In The Times, Giles Coren says that while small and pokey and located in loathsome Leicester Square, the St John Hotel is precise and gorgeous a manifestation of Fergus Henderson's beautiful philosophy.

In London, the Metro's Marina O'Loughlin says the first outpost of Bill's Produce in the capital is a big, fat fake operation that's dictated by the spreadsheet, while the Evening Standard's David Sexton says Pizza East in Notting Hill, the second site of the trendy Soho House Group-owned pizza restaurant, is worth the trek.

James Durrant, executive chef at the Michelin-starred Maze restaurant in London, is leaving Gordon Ramsay Holdings (GRH) after nine years with the company.

The chef's departure comes just weeks after Jason Atherton, former chef patron of the international Maze group of restaurants, announced his resignation from GRH.

A former Acorn winner, Durrant first joined GRH as a junior chef at the group's flagship three-Michelin-starred restaurant on Royal Hospital Road, before heading north to become junior sous chef at Paul Kitching's Michelin-starred Juniper in Altricham, Cheshire.

He then returned to London and GRH to work at the then Michelin-starred restaurant at Claridge's, before becoming executive chef at Maze in 2005. In this role, he helped launch the first international branch of Maze in New York, as well as Maze Grill in London.

Durrant said he was now looking forward to the next step of his career. "After an amazing five years at Maze and nine years at GRH I have decided to take some time out and I am really looking forward to the next step in my career," he said.

A spokeswoman for GRH added: "We're very sad to be saying goodbye to James, he is a fantastic young talent and we wish him all the best for the future."

Durrant's leaving marks the fourth senior chef departure from GRH in two years, with Marcus Wareing and Mark Sargeant also having left the group.

Meanwhile, Atherton, who opened Table No1 by Jason Atherton in Shanghai in May, will be launching a restaurant in London's Mayfair in the autumn rumoured to be called Pollen Street Social Jason Atherton.  

It's the next chapter in the never ending saga that is the fallout between Gordon Ramsay and erstwhile protégé Marcus Wareing.

The former best mates famously fell out last summer when Wareing left Gordon Ramsay Holdings to run the Petrus restaurant at the Berkeley Hotel as his own.

Afterwards Wareing spoke out about the rift with Ramsay saying he would rather kill himself than work with the "sad bastard" again. "If I never speak to that guy again for the rest of my life, it wouldn't bother me one bit. I wouldn't give a f***," he raged then.

But it seems Wareing's had a change of heart and in his most recent interview the chef-patron of his eponymous two-Michelin-starred restaurant at the Berkeley, admitted that he was more to blame for the rupture than Ramsay.

He said he'd wanted to "engineer a break" that would allow him to set up on his own. "I didn't want to be in another man's world any more. I was stubborn and I dug my heels in," he told the Sunday Times.

"I picked a fight to engineer the break. I don't really think he did anything wrong -- it was just me feeling how much I wanted to be on my own."

But he admitted he felt freer now with "no political battles to fight" or anger inside, even saying he missed Ramsay's friendship. "I don't bear him any grudges. He's a fabulous character and I miss his friendship."  

With all the hardship Ramsay's had to deal with of late, I bet he could do with a friend.

You might recognise head chef Tristan Welch from this year's Great British Menu series where he impressed judges with his rhubarb and custard crumble ice cream (pictured below).

He joined Launceston Place in autumn 2007 from the former Pétrus where he worked under Marcus Wareing. The move saw the young chef not only front his own restaurant but also switch from modern French to modern British cooking.

Launceston Place is perched among rows of quaint multimillion-pound housing - all stucco frontages and cherry blossom gardens - and there's certainly no lack of loaded local custom here for Welch to woo. Interiors include chocolaty walls, white tablecloths and a convivial, chic feel that maintains a formality to suit the moneyed Kensington crowd.

Welch's menu is littered with seasonal British produce - nettle, peas, asparagus, rhubarb - a springtime Top of the Crops.

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. 

Another week, another scandal for Gordon Ramsay. But this time it's nothing to do with the fiery chef being accused of infidelity, lying about his football career or feuding with arch rivals former mentor Marco Pierre White or erstwhile protégé Marcus Wareing.

No, this time his company, Gordon Ramsay Holdings (GRH), has had to admit that it has been forced to renegotiate a multimillion-pound loan after breaching agreements with its lender, the Royal Bank of Scotland.

The group, which acts for 11 of Ramsay's multi-Michelin starred restaurants in the UK as well as his pub in London's East End, disclosed the breaches in its most recent financial statement. Released last week, the accounts were filed eight months late.

However, GRH did not specify what covenants were breached, neither did it clarify whether it breached the covenants in the financial year reported (2007) or whether the breaches are ongoing.

Naturally, the development has had a lot of interest from the media.

The Times reports on the matter as Ramsay facing his own Kitchen Nightmare.  

According to the Financial Times, although GRH's "accounts are for the 2007 financial year, the fact that they were signed off last month implies the discussions between the group and its lender are ongoing". 

Meanwhile, The Guardian discovered that GRH has lent £4.4m to Ramsay's US venture, and granted loans to Ramsay and his father-in-law, Chris Hutcheson, of £80,000 and £530,000 respectively.

The Telegraph found that the two directors in GRH, Ramsay and Hutcheson, were paid salaries of more than £2m in 2007. 

GRH's turnover increased £3.5m to £41.6m in 2007. Its operating profit was £3.3m, an increase of £2.3m.

However, as the Hardens point out, as recently as six months ago Hutcheson told the Evening Standard that turnover for 2007 was £46m, £5m more than the accounts reveal. 

While tomorrow night sees Heston Blumenthal, John Campbell, Marcus Wareing, Angela Hartnett and Phil Howard strut their stuff at South Downs College in aid of The Ark, an arm of Hospitality Action (HA) which focuses on educating people in the industry about the dangers of alcohol dependency and drug misuse, May brings a different kind of fundraiser for the HA in the form of a once-in-a-lifetime Great British Menu dinner involving all the finalists from the 2008 BBC2 hit series.

How? Well Jason Atherton, head honcho at Gordon Ramsay's Maze restaurant in London, has pulled together all his Great British Menu mates to create a six-course meal for 300 people to be held at the London Marriott Hotel Grosvenor Square on 18 May.