Today’s Guardian includes an extensive (and rather hagiographic) profile of Gordon Ramsay, and consideration of ‘where he goes now’, prompted by newspaper reports following our recent press release.
Apparently, a release such as ours would normally “signify very little”, because it was “headline-grabbing”, and comes “from a guide that often provokes cynicism within the industry by specialising in such things”.
Really? Surely, such commentary completely misses the point: Harden’s results attract attention not because it is a guide, but because it is also a huge survey. With over 8000 participants, and some 85,000 individual reports, it may well be the largest detailed consumer survey – of any type – conducted in the UK every year. Next year will be the 20th. There is nothing remotely surprising in the conclusions of such a large and well-established survey receiving widespread coverage.
And what are these “such things” in which we apparently specialise? Rather than these dark hints, could someone give particulars of what we’ve got wrong, or been unfair about, over the years? Our biggest ‘controversial’ stories over the past 19 years were: i) that Conran restaurants were being wildly overhyped (late-’90s); ii) that this great new chef, Gordon Ramsay, was emerging/had emerged as London’s London’s best (much of the current decade – see analysis we published last year); iii) that Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen was wildly overpriced (mid-’00s); and iv) that Ramsay’s dominance was crumbling (last two years). If such statements were in any way controversial at the time, they subsequently generally became the view of most people who are informed on the subject.
It is also worth noting that our press release was a great deal more nuanced than most subsequent press reports would suggest. The picture we painted was that having been through a difficult year (as Ramsay himself has put on record), which had taken its toll on the flagship restaurant (which is not really so surprising), the success of Murano showed that the group still ‘has what it takes’, and that much would turn on the success of the forthcoming Pétrus.
Can there be many commentators out there who believe that such an analysis is seriously wrong?
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