Gordon's gone chav. After a difficult year in which sales at his restaurant group have fallen 9.5 per cent and he has publicly feuded with his former chief executive father-in-law, he has finally opened this vast new restaurant in the One New Change mall, directly opposite Jamie Oliver's meat palace, Barbecoa.
Costing £5 million to launch, more than a year behind schedule, Bread Street Kitchen is aimed squarely at the mid-market, City workers on "£40,000 or £50,000".
The look is New York warehouse - but it all seems fake for this has never been an industrial space; it feels more like the set for a reality TV show.
The other Ramsay restaurant Bread Street Kitchen most resembles is Plane Food at Heathrow's Terminal 5, where the reality slip works best and the clientele seem genuinely to suppose they're as good as dining with a celebrity chef.
Ramsay was prowling around, glad-handing all, giving the punters a thrill, the feeling of being almost on TV. But the place is not, on last night's showing, counting on being a haunt of the young and beautiful.
The menu is mainly manly, with some salads and Raw Bar starters provided for the ladies. Familiar dishes lurk under ambitious names, all precisely portion-controlled and identikit delivered, none of them cheap, with starters around £10-£12, mains £20 or more. "King crab and apple cocktail, pink peppercorns" was just a poshed-up prawn cocktail, carefully, not generously, made, overpriced at £15. Cep toast, poached egg (£12.50) was good old mushrooms on toast, buttery and bland.
"Hardwick mutton and potato pie" (£16) was an enhanced shepherd's pie, with nice cheesy potato crust and soft, savoury dark meat underneath that mutton-fan Prince Charles himself might enjoy, although the large pieces of leathery skin, suitable for bookbinding, were less appealing.
Grilled loin of yellow fin tuna (£20) was asked for rare and came impressively raw, swamped in an onion and mint salad with a sharply citric dressing. Great big hand-cut chips (£3.50) served in a beaker were excellent, though.
If Ramsay's chain restaurants don't thrill, they are usually executed with sharp professionalism - and Bread Street Kitchen is a huge addition, challenging Jamie head-on, and greatly to be preferred to the lamentable Madison on the top floor of One New Change. It may well thrive. Why, last night as we left, Nando's right next door was almost deserted.
Bread Street Kitchen
10 Bread Street, St Paul's, EC4M 9AB
