Ramsay's Kitchen Confidential No More

By sizemore Last edited 218 months ago
Ramsay's Kitchen Confidential No More
withnail.jpg

On the subject of dangerous kitchens we believe that Frank Zappa sang it best:

Who the fuck wants to clean it? It's disgusting and dirty / The sponge on the drainer is stinky and squirty / If you squeeze it when you wipe up what you get on your hands then could un-balance your glands and Make you blind or whatever...

Words to live by and as filthy depraved bloggers living in much the same squalor as filthy depraved rockstars we would put our own hob up against any environmental disaster that you care to name. Unfortunately lowly chefs who want to live like rockstars are not allowed to mimic us. Especially chefs who gain their small screen celebrity by screaming at other people about the state of their kitchens. You can sense the glee then in Martin Hickman's copy when he reveals the results of health inspection reports garnered under the freedom of information act in today's Independent:

An inspector who visited Ramsay's three-star Michelin restaurant in Chelsea last March found several problems that fell foul of the 1990 Food Safety Act. The inspector demanded that the chef fix broken tiles - where scraps can accumulate - and split door seals and stop storing cleaning materials next to food. Most embarrassingly for a chef with a spotless approach, Ramsay was ordered to "thoroughly clean" the freezer. The restaurant, called Gordon Ramsay, was breaking rules on electrical safety and did not have an accident book...

Inspectors also found a "risk of contamination" which made us think of exquisitely dressed infected coughing up blood all over Danny Boyle. Worse still was the news that "Soap was missing from the ladies' staff lavatory". The thought of all those unwashed hands playing with food after depositing unknown quantities of sugar and spice and all things nice down the loos is a stomach-turner. Thank god there was plenty of soap to hand after the slugs and snails and puppy-dogs' tails had been flushed.

A spokesperson for Ramsey pointed out that these "are all incredibly minor points and they praised the overall standards. The Ramsay company takes hygiene incredibly seriously" and went on to say that their kitchens "are completely immaculate" which lead us to believe they have the 2003 Oxford dictionary that defines immaculate as "in need of a good wash".

The Ivy also gets a bit of a kicking for fruit flies behind the dishwasher and "low-level mice activity". We think this means that the mice were merely discussing the possibility of strapping traps to themselves and setting them off in the dumbwaiter as opposed to actually being in a position to carry out such an attack.

Nobu got a clean bill of health with the only black mark against its name being the fact that Madonna eats there.

Last Updated 31 January 2006