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If revenge really is a dish best served cold, nobody told Gordon Ramsay. This weekend the Scots-born chef is raising the temperature to boiling point as he puts the final garnish on a dish that he has been preparing for 12 months. “I'm going to call it two fingers to the Connaught,” he says. He will serve it - with relish - on Monday when he opens his first hotel and restaurant.

The York & Albany, in Regent's Park, is more than just another Ramsay restaurant. It's his way of getting even with the five-star hotel. The Connaught parted company with Ramsay and his Michelin-starred right-hand woman, Angela Hartnett, last year. A two-Michelin-star French chef, Hélène Darroze, took her place after negotiations about a new restaurant deal broke down.

Ramsay, 41, describes the Connaught as “anally retentive” and Hartnett, who recently suffered the indignity of being “deleted” from The Michelin Guide this January because of the move, dismisses the managers of the hotel, which reopened earlier this year after a multimillion-pound refurbishment, as “little shits”.

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Now the griddle - and the reservations book - are in the other hand. The £4 million York & Albany is a modern, ten-room townhouse hotel, owned by Gordon Ramsay Holdings (GRH), with a restaurant, run by Hartnett, serving Italian-accented modern European cuisine. The 40-year-old's family hails from Emilia-Romagna, the gastronomic heartland of northern Italy.

Ramsay and Hartnett insist the new venture is more in tune with the times than the Connaught. “They're ‘lord and lady' pompous. Their staff walk around with their heads up their arse,” he says. She adds: “We're niche, stylish, British, real and much better value. We're not hoteliers on a grand scale but we believe we can compete on a smaller level.”

Comparing the start-up with one of the most established hotels in London sounds typical gobby Ramsay but the fiery chef is serious. So serious that he has lured James Partridge, the former manager of the stylish Claridge's in Mayfair, to run the hotel. Can Ramsay, Hartnett and Partridge - a team that sounds more like a bunch of undertakers than wannabe hoteliers - create enough of a success to thumb their noses at their posh former partners? I checked in last week to find out.

The prices certainly suit the economic climate more than the £500-a-night Connaught. Rooms start at £180 and come with free wi-fi. The set lunch is three courses for £15 and the most expensive starter on the à la carte dinner menu is £9.

The pumpkin risotto with gorgonzola, the fish stew with piperade, fennel and parsley and the red-leg partridge with curly kale and truffle chips are the pick of the menu. The vintage wines by the glass, in particular, the elegant Mercurey 1er Cru Les Puillets, are less than a tenner.

For those who don't want to eat in the restaurant, there will be tapas in the bar and a deli, for guests and passers-by. You can buy pancetta and puréed white truffle pizzas from the wood-burning oven, snacks, picnics for Regent's Park and soon Hartnett will use the deli to launch her own food range under the Nonna's label. Nonna is Italian for grandmother.

The hotel, an 1826 John Nash-designed coaching house that GRH bought last year, breaks new design ground for Ramsay. The dining room may be decorated in 17 shades of “Eurobland greige” which make you feel like you have died and gone to Kelly Hoppen heaven, but the rooms are a refreshing mix of antiques, offset with porno-chic Seventies chairs, tables and desks. The Regency Suite, with a terrace overlooking the park, and Room 4, in the former stables block, which has its own private entrance and terrace, are the best.

So far, so promising. But the hotel is unlikely to get such good reviews as the grub. Stuck between Camden Town and the West End, it's neither central, nor “local”. Coming from the park or Primrose Hill is idyllic but walking from Camden Town Tube involves stepping over drunks and pizzas of the pavement variety.

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