Like much in New York - though, curiously, not hookers or crystal meth - eating out is something of a bargain if you’re visiting from the UK. To dine in one of Gordon Ramsay’s UK restaurants requires either remortgaging your flat or selling one of your children. To eat at Gordon Ramsay at The London in NYC does not. (Unless you want it to.)
Indeed, even the fine dining environs are not completely beyond the grasp of those on a modest budget. A little less profligacy at the Apple Store should cover something of a decadent night sampling such delights as Ramsay’s lobster ravioli with celery root cream and shellfish vinaigrette, or roast lamb with candied onions and confit tomatoes. Both feature on the eight-course Menu Prestige, which comes in at a not-at-all unreasonable $110 (£57).
Of course, there is a catch: entrance to the fine dining area requires smart dress, with jackets preferred for gentlemen. Now, I’m sure it’s not required if you’re Madonna, say, but given that she likely thinks dressing smartly is wearing a coat made entirely of kittens or some such, it’s perhaps best for everyone if she does just turn up in a tracksuit.
For us mere mortals – mere mortals who hadn’t plundered Brooks Brothers bargain basement for a delightful double-breasted blazer each – chancing it, even in Marc Jacobs T-shirts, didn’t seem like an option. (The spirit of snotty intimidation is alive in restaurants worldwide, it seems.) Thus, we settled for a table in the bar, which proved altogether more lively and replete with plentiful people-watching opportunities.
The bar menu has a tapas-esque structure, with several different dishes on offer, all at around $15 (£8) each. Our charming waitress - extraordinarily well-groomed and surely a lesbian artist (an aspiring member of the cliterati, perhaps?) - advised we pick four or five dishes each to accompany the smashing, velvety-but-light chianti.
Unable to resist instruction from a strong woman, we decided upon a wide and varied selection, which included white onion velouté with duck ragout, marinated beetroot with ricotta and pine nuts, lobster and chicken Caesar salad, butternut squash and wood sorrel risotto, and oven-baked pork belly with apple, lemon and thyme. On the whole, the meat-based dishes surpassed those without. Ramsay has made no secret of his disdain of vegetarians and the lobster/chicken combo and pork belly were by far the most delicious of our choices.
Portions are not big (tapas is, of course, restaurant code for teeny-tiny) but with flavours so fine, so tantalising, so carefully judged to complement each other, industrial-sized helpings simply aren’t required. Indeed, in America, it’s a relief to get food that a) doesn’t require a forklift truck to get it to your table, and b) actually tastes of something. A mere mouthful of Ramsay’s fare is enough to satisfy.
And if you’re leaving room for dessert, you only really want to sample five tasting dishes at the most. Eating food this good - slowly, appreciatively, quite unlike how people eat in the US and, indeed, Britain – is a pleasure in itself. Without getting all The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, it’s a genuinely sensual experience. Even if there’s a couple from Canvey Island on the next table slurping their way through a bottle of rosé champagne and arguing over which iPod they should buy for their teenage son.
Other guests aside (and let’s face it, ain’t that always the way?) the evening is a treat, the experience as nourishing as the food. While, behind heavy-gilt doors the fine dining area has the hushed reverence of a library, albeit one with deep-pile carpets, the bar bustles and hums with New York life, as intoxicating as the cocktails.
Particularly intoxicating, I can recommend the champagne pear cocktail, the lemon herb cello and the vespa. Drinking them all at once, pre-prandial, will entirely take your mind off eating and, perhaps, to hookers and Class A drugs. The majestic, deco-ish toilets can certainly accommodate both. Not that I’d advocate such East Village behaviour so far uptown.
As for booking, it’s pretty much essential and as far in advance as you can. When booking five days earlier, we were offered a table at either 5.30pm or 9.45pm, and took the latter. While the staff were attentive with water and wine, there was no sense of there being a rush to get us off the table (unlike certain London establishments – Hakkasan, I mean you). And even if there is, there’s always a space at the bar.
• The London: thelondonnyc.com; +1 212 468 8888;
151 West 54th Street, New York.
