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Diners have made a silly assumption if they presume everything they eat at a Gordon Ramsay gastropub is freshly cooked on the premises and that somehow Ramsay has a hand in it. Clearly he does not because he cannot be in so many restaurants at once. Ramsay's gastropubs are no better or worse than a lot of other gastropubs. The high street gastropubs buy in their food because it is the only way they can make ends meet. The best ones - like the Brown Dog in Barnes - are effectively restaurant-standard operations and buy in as much or as little as a top-class establishment.
In a way, pre-preparing some dishes can be a good thing in that slow-cooked stews and casseroles like coq au vin (or coq au van, as the Sun put it today) are improved if they are re-heated. It is not necessarily a sign of bad quality to make something elsewhere and bring it in. The dishes should be judged on their merits. If you can make a better dish at a central processing unit and then ship it out I am all for that.
I am not sure the revelation in today's Sun is going to make too much difference although it could harm Gordon's image. Nowadays he is more of a brand like Unilever than a chef.
Reader views (1)
I quite agree with Charles Campion, and if GRH can put together a formula that works for them and keeps up standards then that's fine. Pricing of the food is based not only on ingredients and price per item but also on all other factors regarding eating in the establishment, staffing, and all the other additions to the finished dish. If Marco White can crow about adding stock cubes to his dishes and get away with it, then GRH cooking sous-vide is not offensive. It's a business model, and maybe we should look and see how many chef-patron are left in London or the UK as opposed to restaurants run by businessmen or corporations.
- Patricia Michelson, london, 17/04/2009 13:42
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