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Ramsay at boiling point again as his latest venture is declared 'boring'

Chris Gray
Friday 23 August 2002 00:00 BST
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It is a brave restaurant critic who tells the famously explosive chef Gordon Ramsay that his food is no good.

And it is an even more courageous one who tells him so after readers of their own guide have voted his new restaurant the fourth best gastronomic experience in London.

But yesterday Richard and Peter Harden provoked the wrath of Ramsay when they branded his restaurant at Claridge's hotel in London "the biggest disappointment of the decade".

The authors of the new edition of Harden's London Restaurants said Ramsay's latest venture was "entirely without distinction" and nothing more than a reasonable effort at a "boring hotel dining room".

Richard Harden said they had expected that as a claimant to the title of England's greatest chef, Ramsay would reproduce at Claridge's the success of his first eponymous restaurant, which has three Michelin stars.

"We were completely wrong," he said. "On the basis of hundreds of reports, the food at Claridge's is but a fraction better than when it was just a hotel dining room and service and ambience are incomparably worse.

"Claridge's is so bad that only the Oxo Tower, where the cooking has long been something of a joke, beat it in nominations for Most Disappointing Meal of the Year, a list of shame in which Ramsay's name has never figured before."

The Harden's guide to London restaurants is compiled from reports by 7,000 regular correspondents, who this year ranked Gordon Ramsay at Claridge's as having the second most disappointing food, being the fourth most overpriced restaurant, and somewhat confusingly, the fourth best gastronomic experience.

Ramsay's response was characteristically direct. "I can't take a guide like this seriously. They have contradicted themselves. If they changed the name of it to 'hard-ons guide' they would probably sell more copies a week than they do in a year.

"They are jumping on the bandwagon and targeting an individual who is a British chef with three Michelin stars. I work like a dog and push for maximum standards and I'm not going to be distracted by this guide, but it is evident that they are being a little bit too personal."

Ramsay added that it had taken 10 years for his first restaurant to earn three stars and that the Claridge's restaurant had been "brought up to speed" in nine months.

The Hardens also criticised Claridge's owners, the US financiers Blackstone, for their decision to close the restaurant at the Connaught hotel and reopen it under one of Ramsay's protegées, Angela Hartnett, saying it "was not broke and did not need fixing".

Ramsay claimed their criticisms showed they had little perception of what the eating public wanted from their fine dining.

"It's easy to say that they should not have closed the Connaught restaurant, but they were not paying for the thing when it was haemorrhaging money. Blackstone have put money into this restaurant to turn into something that is in tune with the public rather than an aristocratic hang-out for snobs.

"It is a prime example of the old boy network not wanting things to change, and they should eat out more rather than complaining when places don't fit their personal tastes," he added.

Peter Harden maintained the criticisms of Claridge's were fair because diners went there expecting to pay at least £73 a head to enjoy the same "quasi-religious experience" on offer at Gordon Ramsay.

"People are going to expect the same of this restaurant but they come away with an experience more like a boring hotel dining room.

"Restaurants at this level are normally exceptional at something, so for this to be indifferent at everything and to have quite poor service is unusual," he said.

It is the second time Ramsay has fallen out with critics in as many months. In July, the AA Restaurant Guide denied a coveted fifth rosette to his Petrus restaurant in Mayfair after the AA's managing director Roger Wood cancelled a booking there. The editor of the guide later resigned, claiming Mr Wood had overruled qualified inspectors, who recommended the restaurant for the honour.

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