| |
|
If it's any consolation, and I dare say it isn't, apparently actually eating at one of Gordon's restaurants is a deeply upsetting experience. Nobody laughs, nobody cries (at least except on the inside,) nobody seems to say anything much, as the food (the manna!) is joylessly consumed. There's nothing to look at except the other diners, who might be wearing more fashionable clothes, or about to have a go at more than just the venison en croute (stuffed with foie gras, lobster, truffles and sweetbreads - it's the ingredients that matter,) with their eating implements, so not that, really. Otherwise, it's stark, white, empty, dead, in every direction. All you can hear is the hollow chink of cutlery, and the muted embarrassment of the waiters, people (usually French, so, you know, fuck 'em) who are genuinely devoted to the art of fine cuisine, and can't quite believe they've wound up working in such a miserable hell hole. Those wishing to re-create the experience of a meal at an especially harsh English boarding school run by monks in the Fifties, as re-imagined by Stanley Kubrick, might be well-advised to try it out, but otherwise, who in God's name wants to shell out the amount of cash required to go home feeling that sad and lonely? Rebekkkah Wade, Ross Kemp and Richard Desmond, that's who.
I'm not usually a fan of AA Gill, but in this case I'm with him - Gordon Ramsay is 'a second-rate human being,' and on every level, just so vulgar.
But, and I'm sure I've said this before, it is possible to get Gordon back. It'd be a long-term strategy, but it's not undo-able. Basically, it'd be a question of booking a few months ahead, for a night when Gordon was physically present in the restaurant, when he wasn't really busy with something else. I suppose he flies in a few times a year, to make sure that everything's still ship-shape. So, the thing to do would be to order as much booze as possible to begin with, and then start acting like he does, routinely, throughout the meal. So complaining about everything on the menu, insulting members of one's party for being 'poofs,' 'women,' or whatever, and then, the killer punch, asking for a well-done steak with chips, 'not fucking pomme frites,' and tomato ketchup, and really just sitting round waiting to be thrown out of Gordon's establishment, the bill for the champagne, etc, having been pretty much forgotten during the course of teh Maestro's red mist.
If enough people did this, which, to put it in context, they used to do to Marco Pierre White all the time - MPW's restaurants in the late Eighties were a notoriously free eat, for the exact same reasons - Gordon would be out of the restaurant business soon enough.
After that, there'd be just the books and telly appearances to worry about, but time seems to take care of those. I used to like Keith Floyd, but these days I find myself wondering what he's up to. |
|
|
