photo credit: gordonramsay.com
Recently leaked Michelin rankings, officially due to be announced on 2 March 2009 has Gordon Ramsay with two stars awarded to Gordon Ramsay au Trianon outside of Paris in Versailles, and one star to Gordon Ramsay at The London West Hollywood in Los Angeles. French critic François Simon from Le Figaro referred to au Trionon as “Xerox food” and in the unabridged quote, “It’s as if you invited me to dinner and offered me a pre-prepared dish you bought from a shop. Of course it’s good and you’ve warmed it up nicely, but I’m not interested in tasting it. I want to taste YOUR food. It’s a cuisine of duplication. In other words, he could open 100 restaurants like this one, the only limit being a human one – he needs to find 100 chefs. Repetitive cuisine is not interesting. It’s like a photocopier: it is Xerox food”. Mr Simon went on to say, that he had tested the fine-dining restaurant with just 10 tables, with starters such as pressed foie gras and Scottish venison, ceps bouchons, Périgord truffle, roasted fig and raspberries. “Quite frankly, it’s just another gastronomic restaurant: boring, pompous and very expensive. It was fine, but I’d already eaten the same thing in Tokyo and all his restaurants in London,” he said. In fact, he fancied the larger, brasserie-style La Veranda’s simple, classic dishes and its view of the park of Versailles.
He also claims that Michelin favors high profile, international celebrity chefs while overlooking more hands-on chefs that stay in the kitchen all night, with just a peek or two through the doors on occasion.
It appears that these same criticisms also apply to Robuchon and Ducasse who also have fists full of stars.
Michelin also came under fire from Mr. Simon for reportedly preparing to give the maximum three stars to the restaurant at the Hotel Le Bristol in central Paris. Mr. Simon commented that it happened to be President Nicolas Sarkozy’s favorite restaurant in close range to the Elysée palace. Mr. Sarkozy recently decorated its executive chef, Eric Fréchon, with the Légion d’Honneur, calling him “a friend”.
Mr. Simon also added, “It’s a safe choice but I have never found that Mr. Fréchon deserved three Michelin stars. It is ‘palace cuisine’ that dazzles the bourgeois, as we say in France, but it’s not tasty: it lacks hips, it lacks flesh, it lacks arse, it lacks life,” said the critic.
In addition to his other ups and downs, Gordon Ramsay may be in a bit of a pinch as he faces a tumbling restaurant empire, the tax man and allegations of infidelity. His flagship restaurant in London, Foxtrot Oscar, has closed for two days a week, and his two other London restaurants are reportedly up on the block for sale. He also has to deal with a $14 million loan from the Royal Bank of Scotland and he allegedly owes back taxes and is in arrears to certain vendors; all of this without mentioning the global financial disaster in progress.
