May we presume you've heard of Gordon Ramsay? The chef, restaurateur, TV personality and author heads one of the largest privately owned restaurant groups in the UK, including, to date, 18 restaurants in London and a further 17 internationally. Aubergine, which first appeared in the Guide in 1995, is where it all started.
In 2006, Gordon Ramsay banned mobile phones from his flagship restaurant on Hospital Road. YouTube was only a year old then and Instagram didn’t exist. Still, people must have been in there texting, or taking fuzzy pictures and posting them on Facebook.
Dinner plans are afoot at the Guinea Grill, the Mayfair pub with a menu unchanged since 1951.
Tasting menu? A la carte? Bit of both? How do we offer choice without waste? How do we reassure the accountant but also stay creative? How do we keep kitchen and front of house teams enthusiastic, and the experience fresh enough for guests to want to return?
How many courses? Tasting menus, often, are where the finest and most progressive food is found. They can be the hallmark of quality – the bastion of high-end. But it is because of their notoriety that so many restaurants try. Many get them wrong, as Stuart Walton discusses.
