The construction "not just another new London restaurant" means, of
course, "just another new London restaurant". Neither is an
uplifting prospect. NJA signifies a further addition to the identical ranks
of that genus while, on the other hand, JA signifies a further addition to
the identical ranks of that genus. And what with the two genera being
themselves identical? The rag trade's seasonal changes, predicated upon
humankind's limitless capacity for boredom, are the cause of its dignifying
itself as the fashion industry. But why should schmutter-artistes be the
only ones to bear such a moniker?
All industries that offer services or products are today fashion industries.
There no longer exist such things as consumer durables: we live among
short-life products whose fate is to be renewed rather than mended and to be
replaced even before they demand mending. There is no longer a need for a
maker to build-in obsolescence: consumerist mentation occasions
obsolescence. Keep up with the Jones by throwing out before the Jones. Or
throwing up before the Jones if it's the wrong kind of ready meal we're both
competing over and already sick of. Keep up with the upgrade.
Restauration is much more the fashion industry than the rag trade is:
Jim-Bobbi Beauzizi and Chantal Godilleuse do not imitate each other. Wayne
Bruv and Daz Git-Beave compete against each other by being different.
Restaurants compete against each other by being the same, even more the
same. If new London restaurants were the same in a worthwhile way they might
be worth patronising. Mostly they're not. With very few exceptions they
employ the same template, are out of the same mould.
Gordon Ramsay is worth patronising. He is today what Nico Ladenis was 15 years
ago, what Marco White was ten years ago. They have much in common.
Self-invention. A self-propelled reputation for bovver. Technical
brilliance. Cosmopolitan parentage. A given name ending in o - it was merely
by a slip of the registrar's pen that Gordo became Gordon. A background in
soccer: Nico played for Bristol City under the name of John Atyeo, Marco for
Chelsea as Ken Shellito, Gordo for Crystal Palace as John Salako. They
behave like rival dons. They hate each other. They love each other.
Currently Marco loves Marco who hates Nico who loves Marco who loves Gordo
who hates Nico who hates Marco who hates Marco. That, anyway, was the state
of play when I began that sentence.
What they don't share is a culinary idiom. The best chefs don't. All great
footballers are great in different ways. Of those I saw in the flesh, Cruyff
was the carthorse who won the Derby. Le Tissier and Duncan Mackenzie were
sloths who for one minute of 90 transformed themselves into kraits. Migueli
was a blond vampire. Lorimer was Fred Trueman. Platini was, well, Platini
was God. And Zizou is his only son - currently. There is no trinity. But
then there never was: parthenogenesis is a fiction invented by men who can't
bear the idea that someone blew up their mother's tyres.
The best chefs are akin. Gordo is now in his pomp. Nico was a conservative
cook - my benchmark has ever been a dinner I ate at his place in Battersea
in the early summer of '83. I had never eaten such perfect cooking, have
seldom had it since: it was fantastically simple. I can't remember whether
it was Fernand Point or van Gogh or William Desdemaines-Hugon who said that
the most difficult thing in the world is to make things simple. Maybe it was
de Pomiane. It was neo-classical.
Marco was much more baroque. But just as haute cuisine is a broad church, so
is the baroque. What sort of baroque? The protestant and the baroque
collided to produce Vanbrugh: a giant beside whom Wren, Gibbs, Archer and
even Hawksmoor are midgets. But there's also the baroque of Murcia and C
diz, there's the baroque of Bavaria - and then there's Juvarra, who in Turin
combined Sicilian show with northern sobriety: Marco.
Gordo is a quite different creature. He is - and I don't want him to belt me -
an effeminate cook. Michel Roux senior (Waterside not Le Gavroche) shares
that quality. Effeminate is usually an adjective of deprecation. I do not
intend it thus. Women who cook professionally - Rogers/Gray, Auguy, Majourel
- tend to a butch simplicity.
Effeminate men are more likely to write than to cook. Effeminacy has no more
to do with sexual orientation than transvestism or camp have. It signifies
merely a form of thought and aesthetic that is uncommon in Britain but which
flourishes - hardly by chance - in those countries that possess a more
founded gastronomic basis; countries where dandyism is less embarrassedly
expressed than here, countries with a guilt-free embrace of sensuality.
The two stylistic idioms that are most obviously effeminate are the rococo and
art nouveau. Both are notable for their rarity in these islands. They have
no accord with common sense. When continental Europe was in thrall to the
rococo, England was being planted with unimaginative exercises in
palladianism. Art nouveau's insular contemporary was the folksy,
down-to-earth, let's-pretend-it's-handmade arts & crafts, which can
never escape its etiquette of vegetarian socialism, of back to the land
Luddism.
The potent delicacy of Ramsay's cooking is quite at odds with both English
tradition and current London practice. It is not out of the mould. I've
dined twice. Faults? Well, a rum baba and a treacle tart were atypically
heavy. Otherwise the persistent impressions are of mental and manual
agility, of confident balance, of a trust in the customer's palate - this is
seldom found: so many chefs mistake exaggeration for bigness and end up with
coarseness. There is also here a manifest desire to please. The staff are
solicitous rather than importunate. They don't push themselves at diners.
What to eat? Just about everything. Roast foie gras with a not too sweet, not
too tart plum "jam"; sweetbreads with braised lettuce; roast lamb
chump with long-cooked lamb shoulder; a sensational creamed onion soup with
ceps; a ham hock and chicken terrine akin to jambon persille; white truffle
risotto; scallops with caper puree, cauliflower puree, fried cauliflower;
panna cotta; pineapple mousse and granita with yoghurt; exceptional
chocolates. This restaurant is as much Claridge's as it is Ramsay. It is
truly glamorous. It is a very rare example of English art deco: the style of
the 1925 exhibition, rather than that of the Hoover Factory. It and Ramsay
are lucky to have each other. Gordo is currently London's best haute
cuisinier. And he has created an old restaurant.
Gordon Ramsay at Claridge's
Brook Street, London W1 (020-7499 0099)
Lunch and dinner every day. £120. 9/10
