GORDON RAMSAY is to turn the dining tables on French culinary snobs by setting up a restaurant in Paris dedicated to the joys of British food.

Its aim will be to deliver the best of British cooking in the heart of haute cuisine. All the produce will be British and specialities will range from Aberdeen Angus beef to Balmoral venison and Cornish sea bass.

“I’ve had a belly-full of the French coming over here and telling us how s*** our food is,” says Ramsay in an interview in today’s Sunday Times News Review. “We have cheese on toast, they have croque-monsieur. They just have posher names. I think we should have a British stake in Paris. And all the produce will be from the British Isles.”

The restaurant signifies Ramsay’s latest attempt to turn himself into a global brand following the opening of restaurants in New York and Tokyo. He also wants to exact revenge on his critics by becoming the first chef to achieve three Michelin stars simultaneously in London, Paris and New York.

In the past year, Ramsay admits, he has been “kicked in the nuts”. Last November Ramsay’s New York restaurant, The London, was mauled by critics who said the food showed a “dearth of inspiration” and the menu was “forgettable”.

In July it emerged that scenes in which Ramsay, 40, appeared to spear a wild fish on his show, the F Word, were faked; and last month his flagship restaurant in Chelsea, west London, lost top spot in a leading restaurant guide. His tenure at the Connaught hotel in London also came to an end.

Ramsay has no intention of changing. “The last three weeks have been the s******** in terms of negative press,” he said. “I’m judged as a persona over the quality of what I produce, and that’s my downfall.

“Do you stop supporting Man U because Wayne Rooney appears in an advert? No. Spreading myself too thin? Come and eat the food and shut the f*** up.”

His Paris restaurant, scheduled to open in spring 2008, will be in the Trianon Palace hotel, just yards from the Palace of Ver-sailles. Ramsay, who is worth £67m, also plans to open restaurants in Los Angeles, Amster-dam, Prague and Singapore.

However, he is fired up about challenging the French on their home ground. “Paris is a big one for me,” he said. “We should f****** stand strong and shout from the rooftops, with our hand-dived scallops from the west coast of Scotland, our phenomenal venison from Balmoral, and our wonderful Aberdeen Angus steak, and our line-caught sea bass from Cornwall, and our f****** mussels and oysters from beds in south Ireland. Why not?”

Ramsay’s incursion is the latest challenge to French cooking, which has been under attack in recent years, accused of remaining mired in tradition. The tastes of France’s younger generations have been moving from traditional fare towards Chinese and Middle Eastern restaurants and fast food.

Despite the growing popularity of ethnic cuisine, the idea of eating at a British restaurant has remained an experiment too far for French gourmets.

At a summit in 2005 in Kalinin-grad, Russia, Jacques Chirac, then French president, confided to his German and Russian counterparts: “One cannot trust people whose cuisine is so bad,” adding: “The only thing they have ever done for European agriculture is mad cow disease . . . After Finland, it is the country with the worst food.”

Parisian chefs were sniffy this weekend about Ramsay’s prospects. Christian Constant, a Michelin-starred cook who owns the fashionable Le Violon d’Ingres and three other restaurants near the Eiffel Tower, said: “Ramsay is welcome to come over but his restaurant risks being empty at the beginning. Fine eating just isn’t in the British culture. When I go to Britain I eat mostly sandwiches. I end up going to the supermarket. It’s not that we’re snobs, we’re connoisseurs - we know what we’re talking about.”

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