Restaurants

Poor old King Louis XVI. A life cut short by the guillotine in the service of Republicanism, and 200 years later the barbarians are still howling at the gates. Or swearing at them, anyway. At the Trianon Palace Hotel, on the fringes of Louis’s palace of Versailles, Gordon Ramsay has set up his latest fine dining establishment.

What’s he doing here? For that matter, what’s he doing everywhere – 11 restaurants in London, 8 in other countries, three TV programmes, a sponsorship deal (Gordon’s Gin sponsors the Gordon Ramsay Scholar Award). Ramsay likes to represent himself as a man of the people (‘Not bad for a boy from a Glasgow council estate,’ he murmurs as he shows off his new gaff). This ought to be ludicrous, given that he made his name cooking top-end French food for rich Londoners, but since he’s all over the TV and the papers and opening a gastropub every other minute at the moment, he’s certainly a man the people know plenty about. Feature continues

He may be a celebrity in a culture that elevates TV stars over tiara-sporting royals, but he’s not the modern equivalent of Louis XVI or even Louis’ chef. He’s more like a horde of revolting peasants all rolled into one. And he is revolting. No, I’m not doing a Gordon (which would, anyway, involve calling him ‘fucking revolting’): actually he’s good fun, if toxic with caffeine and nerves, when I meet him at the Trianon on opening night. I mean that he is in revolt – against low standards, rude critics and the possibility that he’s going to wind up poor and forgotten.

Make the pilgrimage to Louis XVI's palace at Versailles for fine dining, at Ramsay's latest

‘Six months ago, I went to see a French chef, Marc Meneau of L’Espérance, with my father-in-law, Chris [Hutcheson, who runs Gordon Ramsay Holdings]. Meneau ’s 69 years of age, millions in debt, hasn’t got a pot to piss in, trying to refinance and looking for a partner. That meeting made me refocus, made me determined not to do things the old-fashioned French way. People say “Why do you work so hard?” I mean – he should be looking forward to relaxing at that stage of life and there he was in tears at the table, financially stuffed. That’s not what I want.’

I gaze at him in wonder. Ramsay is one of the most famous chefs on the planet. And he hasn’t got there by spurning filthy lucre, either – he’s now as rich as the folk for whom he started off cooking. He says he doesn’t care about the money and that the TV – ‘Kitchen Nightmares’, ‘The F Word’, ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ – is all about allowing him the freedom to do what he wants in the restaurant world (‘I don’t have to be governed by a board of directors that can manipulate me, can say “We need to see instant return from day one” ’). But bankrupt? Not unless he develops a gambling addiction or a coke habit, and probably not even then. Ramsay is howling at the gates of the world’s most difficult, arrogant and insular food community because he’s a classic overachiever, fuelled by fear of failure – and what could be scarier for a British chef trained in France, garlanded with Michelin stars for his modern versions of La Grande Cuisine, than to open a Paris restaurant?

When I meet him, he’s livid because François Simon, restaurant critic of Le Figaro, has already published a diatribe, calling Ramsay’s food ‘unimaginative and bland’ and saying the French won’t trek out to Versailles. The restaurant isn’t open yet – Simon has eaten at Ramsay’s London places and at the Veranda, also in the Trianon Hotel. ‘That was the brasserie!’ Ramsay explodes, before I’ve even had a chance to ask him about Simon. ‘It’s a really nice, straightforward, simple, luxurious brasserie. He hasn’t even tasted the food yet. But here’s the weird thing: I went into [Gordon Ramsay at] Claridges a month ago, there’s Simon, sat with my general manager. Next night, I’m doing the rounds, I stop off at Royal Hospital Road [Ramsay’s three Michelin-starred London restaurant] and who’s there? Bam! Mr "Ratatouille" himself.’

But isn’t that logical? Ramsay is a brand; he says that his customers pay for quality in his restaurants the way they do with a Prada jacket (‘Do you ask if Miuccia Prada stitched it personally?’). That’s supposed to be why he’s here – so that the glorious name of Ramsay will echo in every truffle-snuffling corner of the globe, otherwise why not just stick to London?

'They're going to judge me? F**k off!' Ramsay takes withering French press reviews with typical good grace

Yet he wants it both ways. He wants his Paris restaurant to be judged on its own merits and for him to get the credit (‘if I get three Michelin stars here, from a chef’s point of view I’ll feel I’ve achieved something,’ he says plaintively) but he doesn’t want to have to slave over a hot stove to achieve that. ‘Every critic wants to see you bust your bollocks on the stove to make them feel better that you fucking seasoned the vinaigrette and the only thing you didn’t do was wipe their arse before they left,’ he says fiercely. ‘That’s bullshit – welcome to 2008.’

Ramsay can’t do without mean critics – hell, look at him on TV, he is one – but that only makes him hate them more. He describes Simon (supposedly the model for Anton Ego, the overbearing restaurant critic in the animated film ‘Ratatouille’) as like ‘AA Gill, with a bit of Michael Winner, festered with Fay Maschler on a bad day’. No French toff being carted off to the chop by a bloodthirsty crowd of revolutionary riffraff could have felt harder done by.

Despite this blazing negativity, Ramsay is brilliant at the most positive element of any business: finding and nurturing new talent. His protégés are household names: Marcus Wareing at Pétrus, Jason Atherton at Maze, Angela Hartnett, formerly at The Connaught and now about to open a restaurant in Mayfair (‘she’ll be the first woman in Britain with three Michelin stars,’ he claims). Simone Zanoni, head chef at the new restaurant after five years keeping Royal Hospital Road in triple stars, comes in for similar praise, if couched in typical terms. ‘This young guy is extraordinary and he came to me from the Cordon Bleu Cookery School where his father was paying £28,000 a year for a diploma. What, to make a fucking fig roll, a Victoria sponge? Learn how to make eggs Florentine – that’s gonna get you successful today?’

Discussing the menu

Ramsay should let the critics go fricassee themselves: Zanoni is some culinary talent and he, or someone, has a sense of humour too. Our meal, from the pre-starter, with its duck egg and haricots, its spoon made of toast holding one tiny mushroom and its pancetta crisp, to the Granny Smith parfait and Champagne mousse covered by an enormous arching chocolate lid and served with French cider, is a clever play on everything Ramsay wants to represent. There’s the solid no-nonsense of an English breakfast, albeit one involving more man hours than most B&Bs see in a month; the Scottish langoustines; the sustainable Allaiton lamb; and that dessert, which has to be the most extravagant use of a prosaic English apple type I’ve ever seen. And the restaurant is beautiful, with its arching white banquettes, its ten round tables which comfortably seat six and the bar at the end where those who are not among that night’s privileged 60 will be able to gawp. Maybe the French won’t come – although Paris’s mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, is determined to bring the suburbs into the fold – but if not, hordes of tourists probably will. They’ll have made the pilgrimage to see Louis’ beautiful palace and to gaze at the not-so-Petit Hameau where Marie Antoinette played at being a milkmaid until real milkmaids came to chop off her empty, elegantly coiffured head.

Ramsay, like the revolting peasants, wants France to change. ‘That level of arrogance!’ he rages. ‘You can find shit food anywhere – France has more branches of McDonald’s than anywhere in the world [this isn’t true, although it does have more than the UK]. They’re static, and they’re shitting themselves. It takes a Scotsman to do it for them.’

Yet France – where he trained, under the great chef Guy Savoy, where his influences come from, where he’ll have to slog for about five generations to be accepted – is the grail. He thinks London’s great, loves taking his staff to Billingsgate Market, likes to train for his next marathon with a little riverside jog but this time, it’s Oedipal.

The bar at Trianon

‘The bad thing about me,’ Ramsay reflects, that face like the Outer Hebrides peering at me over his millionth espresso of the day, ‘is I need that level of excitement.’ Lord only knows what this adrenalin junkie will do for a hit if he manages to subjugate this daddy of all culinary challenges; it seems hard to believe that LA, his next flag on the map, will offer anything like the buzz, although there are rumours of another Maze, this time in central Paris. ‘Even more than New York, Paris is personal,’ Ramsay acknowledges. ‘There, we had a rocky start, sure. But I know chefs today, heading towards 50 years of age, who are still trying to win two Michelin stars, and we won that in ten months there. And I can’t think of any better grounding [for Paris] than getting my nuts kicked in in New York. There, they complained about no fireworks; here – I’m going to fucking explode!’ Well, sure – isn’t that what he does best? And it looks possible that, when he does, pieces of Ramsay will land all over the city. Paris, you’ve been warned.

Gordon Ramsay au Trianon, Trianon Palace and Spa, 1 Boulevard de la Reine, Versailles (00 33 1 30 84 55 55).

The filth and the fury
Ramsay on Ramsay
‘My biggest problem is I’m too fucking honest. I can’t hold back, I don’t have to do it for corporate reasons and more importantly I think it’s really important to call it as you see it. And cooks today need that level of honesty – who wants to blow smoke up their arse?’

Ramsay on London
‘We need more restaurants like Chez Bruce, more chefs like Anthony Demetre at Arbutus. And they need to drop Ken Livingstone in the Thames. We should be eating out on the terraces, pedestrianising and having fun, we should be opening till midnight, we shouldn’t have all these stupid restraints – it doesn’t make sense.’

Ramsay on Paris
‘Would Raymond Blanc be the success in France he is in England? Would he fuck! Would the Waterside Inn be the Waterside Inn on the Seine? Would it fuck! And now they’re going to judge me – rosbif, Anglais, coming back to France – fuck off!’

Ramsay on critics he hates
‘Michael Winner has a palate like a cow’s backside. With Fay Maschler, with AA Gill, it’s all personal – they’re allowed to be personal, but you’re not allowed to be about them. Well fuck it, I am going to be, because it works both ways.’

Ramsay on critics he likes
‘Guy Dimond, Marina O’Loughlin – for them nothing is personal, they just tell it fucking straight. And when I get it wrong, I put my hand up, admit it and move on.’

Ramsay on Michelin stars
‘How important are they? Well, how important is it to win the FA Cup – it only lasts 90 minutes, then you’ve got to hold it again. And I suppose that’s where we put ourselves out to get shot at because people say “If you lose your third star next year, it will be catastrophic for your brand” – fuck the brand! Losing the third star – [French chef Alain] Ducasse has done it twice. I’ll win it back! I’m 41, I’ve got another 15 years.’