Gordon Ramsay's first New York restaurant has suffered a scorching at the hands of the city's top food critic.

The New York Times' fearsome Frank Bruni awarded Gordon Ramsay at the London just two stars out of four and battered the celebrity chef for relying on luxuries like foie gras and truffles as much as his imagination.

He laid into a "cloying, gummy wedge of turbot" and a "bizarre" starter combining langoustine tails with "indelicate nuggets" of boneless chicken wing.

And while he approved of some dishes he said that despite Ramsay's fiery reputation the eaterie failed in the most important area - offering excitement.

There was a "dearth of inspiration" among both appetisers and main courses, with caramelised sea scallops giving "dutiful, forgettable performances".

While two stars from the New York Times means "very good", it is the four star review - only for those restaurants deemed "extraordinary" - that top flight chefs like Ramsay aspire to.

Only five restaurants in the city currently enjoy that honour, the equivalent of three Michelin stars in Britain.

"For all his brimstone and bravado, his strategy for taking Manhattan turns out to be a conventional one, built on familiar French ideas and techniques that have been executed with more flair, more consistency and better judgment in restaurants with less vaunted pedigrees," Bruni wrote.

He added: "Seldom has a conquistador as bellicose as Mr Ramsay landed with such a whisper.

"It's not an unappealing sound, but it's nothing that's going to prick up your ears."

The fabled writer, whose reviews are said to be able to make or break a Manhattan restaurant, was particularly troubled by a dish of stuffed envelopes of "raw, thinly sliced, unpleasantly papery" beetroot that was served three times over the course of several visits.

"Seldom have such frail shoulders been asked to carry such a heavy load," he sniffed.

He criticised the monochrome decor, saying the exit sign was most likely to catch a diner's attention.

"The cautious palette foreshadows a cautious menu, as reliant on default luxuries and flourishes like foie gras and black truffles as on real imagination," Bruni said.

"Most ingredients are predictable, most flavours polite, most effects muted.

"Mr Ramsay may be a bad boy beyond the edges of the plate, but in its centre, he's more a goody-two-shoes."

Ramsay's American debut has already been criticised by several other writers in the city, who complained of "overcooked" sea scallops and branded lobster ravioli "leathery" and "rubbery".

The Scot, who has invested around £3 million in the project at the London NYC hotel, admitted before it opened in November that he had been "religiously" reading up on Bruni's legendary techniques.

He visits a restaurant four or five times before reviewing it, always eating anonymously using an alias and sometimes even a disguise.

Ramsay, who once notoriously booted actress Joan Collins and her dining companion, critic AA Gill, out of his Chelsea restaurant, was said to have provided staff with a rare photo of Bruni in a bid to help them recognise him.

But the reviewer had written about the restaurant on his blog before it even opened, complaining that when he booked a table he was told he would have to move out to a lounge area within two hours.

A top manager later denied there was any such time limit.

In his review, Bruni repeatedly drew attention to Ramsay's flamboyant personality, as seen on The F Word and his American TV show Hell's Kitchen.

By "all accounts and appearances" the chef had "the kind of foul mouth and foul temper those titles suggest", he wrote.

But he praised the prices at the restaurant, where 80 dollars (£41) buys a three-course prix fixe dinner, as "entirely reasonable".

There were also kinder words for a "flurry of first-rate petit fours" and "genuinely helpful" guidance on the wine list.

"But the restaurant fails to deliver the most important thing of all: excitement," he added.

"And it's impossible, given Mr Ramsay's reputation, not to be primed for it, and not to be rankled by the low-key loveliness that you get in its place."

The langoustine and chicken wing dish, which was crusted with hazelnuts and sweetened with maple syrup, prompted Bruni to observe: "Eric Ripert, meet Colonel Sanders."

Ripert is the chef at top Manhattan seafood restaurant Le Bernardin, which has been awarded the coveted New York Times four stars on three occasions.

The dining room made Bruni feel like he was "in a space capsule floating through a supra-national limbo".

He said pastry chef Alistair Wise and chef de cuisine Neil Ferguson were running a serious kitchen and were capable of "impeccable work".

"That makes the restaurant's tentativeness and its bad decisions, which were too numerous, all the more frustrating," he wrote.