Gordon Ramsay
Telephone: 020-7352 4441
Address: 68 Royal Hospital Road, London SW3
Rating:19.5/20
· Menus: lunch, £35 for three courses; lunch & dinner, £65 À la carte; Menu Prestige £80 for seven courses.
Gordon Ramsay at Claridge's
Telephone: 020-7499 0099
Address: Brook Street, London W1
Rating: 17/20
· Menus: lunch, £25 for three courses; lunch & dinner, £50 À la carte; Menu Prestige, £65 for seven courses.
It's not often that I get to spend £400 in the line of field research, but I decided in the interests of science and the furtherance of human knowledge to eat consecutive lunches in both the restaurants carrying the name of Gordon Ramsay.
The two gaffs, the one in Chelsea, the other in Claridge's hotel in Mayfair are quite different affairs. The first is a small boutique, where the big man himself is on the case when not supervising his burgeoning empire. The second is a much larger and grander set-up. The first looks as if it has been decked out in high-gloss MFI; the second parades the effects of a lavishly paid designer in love with 1930s opulence. At the first, you can get a table within a couple of weeks; for a lunchtime table at Gordon Ramsay at Claridge's on April 26, I had to book on January 28.
It has been this way at Claridge's ever since it opened. One reason for this popularity is the cost of the fixed-price lunch menu - £25 for three courses. That represents fabulous value for money, even if your meal is in the hands of Mark Sargeant rather than those of Mr Ramsay himself. At the eponymous restaurant, the fixed-price lunch is £35 for three courses. Given that there is a considerable overlap in dishes, albeit with slight differences in the way of saucing, garnishes and so on, is there a marked difference in quality to justify the difference in price? Yes, is the simple answer.
The lunch that Titfer and I enjoyed at Gordon Ramsay was simply the best meal of any kind that I have enjoyed in this country for a long time. I have not always held Mr Ramsay's cooking in quite such regard as others. At earlier meals, there were occasional technical fluffs, evidence of dubious taste, a tendency to opt for display that verged on the vulgar, and a derivative shadow hung over many of the dishes. Perhaps I was wrong. Anyway, on the evidence of lunch, all those misgivings were set aside.
The techniques and principles of the classical French kitchen still shape Mr Ramsay's culinary imagination, but his British roots are manifested by more than the language of the menu. Vegetables are embraced in a way that is alien to French chefs, so that they are fully integrated into the play of flavour and texture of each dish.
For example, baby carrots, peas and spring cabbage in a pool of refined pigeon stock brought leguminous freshness to velvety pigeon breasts and their cap of soft foie gras. And baby spinach, braised onions, salsify and truffled mashed potato helped to anchor slices from a saddle of lamb of exceptionally full flavour.
Each dish was, in effect, a sophisticated dialogue between food and consumer, eliciting intelligent pleasure from tongue, tastebuds, and olfactory bulb. The pyrotechnics of plate arrangement had given way to unostentatious virtuosity, sublimating visual éclat to flavour and texture.
The only hint of criticism was the occasional over-reliance on truffle oil (on the velouté of celeriac at the start of the meal, and on the truffle mash). But set this beside the sublime scallop tartar, where the size of the nuggets into which the scallop had been cut was critical to the tender, springy texture of the dish, and where the piscine saltiness of the Oscietra caviar on top was critical to the marine sweetness of the shellfish; or beside the piquancy of the aubergine caviar with the crisp fillet of red mullet; or beside the fruity sweetness of the caramelised banana financier balanced by the penetrating acidity of chocolate sorbet (a superior version of banoffee pie, a tribute to Ramsay's Scottish roots?), then even truffle oil may be forgiven.
There was no way in which the much larger operation run by Mark Sargeant could compete. The fact was that roasted foie gras and confit poulet de Bresse "pressed" with Cabernet Sauvignon vinaigrette, and fillets of John Dory with celeriac purée, braised celery and basil velouté were decent enough, but they lacked the polish, the pointing up of flavours and refined balance of Gordon Ramsay.
Titfer remarked that he couldn't quite see the point of cutting up sweetbreads into squares before caramelising them, even if you were going to serve them with wilted rocket and Jerusalem artichokes, as you lost one of the points of sweetbreads, which is their taut softness. And he felt that sweetness in the Claridge's version of the poached-grilled pigeon was generally overplayed, although the pigeon breasts themselves had him rhapsodising at length.
If you must know, the bill at Gordon Ramsay came to £233 - £35 for the menu du jour, plus £73 for three courses on the à la carte menu, plus drinks, which amounted to £125 in all. Lunch at Gordon Ramsay at Claridge's was £168; that is, £50 for the à la carte, £25 for the fixed-price menu, and the rest, well, yes, you've guessed it. Either of these represent a great deal of money - but, of the two, I would spend the larger sum for the greater experience.
