And so the caravan moves on. Another Ramsay launch (in Versailles, this time). Another media flurry.

First off was France’s most senior critic, getting his retaliation in first in a sarcastic – and surprisingly f-word-strewn – piece in Le Figaro (“Un ‘bad-boy’ chez Louis XVI”).

François Simon’s thesis is not that Ramsay’s cuisine is bad – au contraire, “c’est… [r]égulièrement bon” (if rather uncomplicated and accessible). He is quite sure, though, that this latest outpost of “Gordon Ramsay land” will never attract a discerning clientèle – “À cuisine sans chef, clientèle sans gourmands” (you don’t get gourmets at a restaurant where the name chef isn’t in the kitchen.)

How paradoxical then – or perhaps not – that Ramsay uses part of his own lengthy interview with the Sunday Times to knock the closest thing his own group has to a resident name chef. Pétrus SW1, he says, which is absolutely identified with long-time chef Marcus Wareing, has been guilty of “inconsistencies”, which must be “rectified”.

Why the Stalin-speak? Pétrus emerged in the most recent Harden’s survey as, overall, the best and most consistent restaurant in the capital, bar none. In the face of snubs like this, can the ever more painful co-habitation between Ramsay and Wareing* really go on much longer?

Elsewhere in the Times article, we learn that the almost-universally panned relaunch of Foxtrot Oscar SW3 is to be closed and, er, relaunched.

Following as it does in the steps of Angela Hartnett at the Connaught (closed) and La Noisette (closed), you can’t help feeling that what the Ramsay group needs most is a pause for breath, and perhaps a bit more real input from the man himself. But now it emerges that Australia is going to be the latest country to benefit from a Ramsay reality TV show…

*For a handy summary of the background to the Ramsay-Wareing relationship, see a recent post on andylynes.com.