Paris food critics have damned Gordon Ramsay's French debut with a mixture of condescending praise and outright scorn.

Mr Ramsay's opening night was welcomed by fellow chefs, including the great Guy Savoy, his mentor, but critics closed ranks against "le bad boy de la cuisine anglaise", and heaped Gallic disdain upon him.

The barrage was led by François Simon, Le Figaro's fearsome critic, who borrowed Mr Ramsay's style while advising customers not to bother trying his fare. "If Gordon Ramsay has come to Paris, it's just to find out what those 'f*****g' Frenchies think about his 'f*****g cooking'," wrote Mr Simon. He would be given the two fingers, Mr Simon predicted in a page-long broadside before the opening.

Gilles Pudlowski, a critic whose annual Pudlo guide is one of the leading authorities, said: "Gordon Ramsay is a copier, a Scottish imitator. There are are so many good chefs here, we don't give a damn about Gordon Ramsay." He told The Times. "We don't need a Scot to give us lessons."

He did, however, allow that Mr Ramsay is a "nice chap and a good-looking guy". He was not a cooking genius but a hard worker. His moelleux aux pommes vertes was almost as good as that of Guy Savoy, Mr Pudlowski added.

The Michelin Guide was to blame for Mr Ramsay's celebrity, he said. "They are fools. What Ramsay does is good but in France it does not deserve three stars."

While Mr Pudlowski has yet to try Mr Ramsay's Versailles restaurant, the chef's opening night was judged a failure by Vincent Noce, critic for Libération. "The dinner was unanimously judged extremely disappointing and quite disconcerting," he told The Times. "He does a very classical 1970s French cuisine . . . a bit out of date but it pleases a foreign public which likes this sort of French museum cooking."

The imperious Mr Simon, who is said to have been the model for Antoine Ego, the vitriolic critic in last year's cartoon film Ratatouille, advised readers not to bother making the trip out of town to Mr Ramsay's suburban establishment. It would only be acceptable to the British and American tourists who think that Versailles is real France, he said.

Mr Ramsay's food was unimaginative and bland, said Mr Simon, a critic who is opposed to celebrity chefs who open multiple restaurants but drop into them only occasionally. "It is good cuisine duplicated with talent but without the real flair that would knock you out," he wrote. "It is world cuisine, nicely buttoned up, pleasant and unchallenging."

He advised diners to steer clear of the gastronomic restaurant at the Trianon and head for the less expensive Veranda, Mr Ramsay's 75-seat brasserie at the same hotel. "You get the best view of the park. The service is much more relaxed.. The food is not fantastically original. Rather than being daring, it picks comfortably a bit here and and a bit there like the crème of Jerusalem artichoke with cauliflower and bacon which could be tasted in any gourmet bistro."

François Régis Gaudry, critic for L'Express, the leading news weekly, said that the magazine had cancelled a feature planned on Mr Ramsay after watching his Hell's Kitchen show, which was "vulgar, macho, out-of-place".

Mr Ramsay is the latest British chef to make a reputation in France, after Jamie Oliver, whose television shows and books have scored moderate success over the past few years. Cuisine TV, a cable channel, has been showing his Kitchen Nightmares for the past year and TMC a digital broadcast station, began showing the California-based Hell's Kitchen yesterday. Previews of the show said Mr Ramsay had a "sadistic", "tyrannical" style that made the chef on an equivalent French reality cooking show look like a gentle-hearted saint.

There were kind words for Mr Ramsay from his colleagues. Mr Savoy, who taught Mr Ramsay his art, said that the British chef was brave to venture into France. "I say bravo". The opening dinner was "very high level. It had frank and clear flavours. I felt good vibrations and a dynamic air in the dining room."

On their blog, Jacques and Laurent Pourcel, who run a highly regarded restaurant at Montpellier, said that Mr Ramsay was "sympathique, approachable, smiling and passioinate about his trade."

"Gordon, welcome to France, land of camembert and cancoillotte (an eastern France cheese). You are arriving in a minefield, but you are a fighter. Good luck guy."

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