In a move that threatens to open old culinary wounds, UK chef Gordon Ramsay is to launch a British food restaurant in Paris.
The Michelin-starred chef is set to open his new restaurant in Spring next year in the Trianon Palace hotel, in the Versailles suburb of the French capital.
‘I’ve had a belly-full of the French coming over here and telling us how s**t our food is,’ Ramsay said. ‘We have cheese on toast and they have croque-monsieur. They just have posher names.’
According to Ramsay, the menu will include west Scottish scollops, Aberdeen Angus beef, Balmoral venison and Cornish sea bass.
UK broadsheet The Times said the move would ‘turn the dining tables on French culinary snobs’, while tabloid paper the Daily Star went one further with the headline, ’Fed-up Ramsay to roast Frogs’.
Ramsay’s Gallic counterparts, however, turned their noses up at his plans. French chef Christian Constant at the Violon d’Ingres restaurant near the Eiffel Tour said ‘fine eating just isn’t in the British culture.’
‘When I go to Britain I eat mostly sandwiches,’ he said. ‘It’s not that we’re snobs, we’re connoisseurs – we know what we’re talking about.’
Ramsay is also set to open restaurants in Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Prague and Singapore.
Written by Oliver Styles, and agencies
