food critic dumps on gordon ramsay

Be a few expletives should they meet!!


By Emma Charlton in Paris | March 23, 2008
A LEADING French food critic could face the famed acid tongue of British celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, after giving his new restaurant a bad review.

A review by food critic Francois Simon in the Le Figaro newspaper threatens to sour the grand opening of the Trianon in Versailles, which houses a fine-dining restaurant and sister brasserie called the Veranda.

"You are in the heart of a brand with its label: Gordon Ramsayland," Simon wrote of the Trianon.

"Our advice: go to the brasserie, the Veranda, instead – but honestly, there are hundreds of tables just as good."

Though he conceded Ramsay was an "excellent chef", Simon accused him, and his French mentors Robuchon and Alain Ducasse, of spreading themselves too thinly across their Michelin-starred empires, leaving others in charge of the kitchens much of the year.

Simon also sniffed at Ramsay's out-of-the-way Versailles location, suggesting he would woo rich foreign tourists but not real Parisians.

Between his eponymous restaurant in Chelsea, London, and eateries across Britain, the US and Asia, Ramsay holds a total of 10 Michelin stars worldwide.

But he is most famous for his reality TV shows, including Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, in which he unleashes withering tirades of foul-mouthed abuse at trainee chefs.