GOURMET LONDON -- PART 9

GORDON RAMSEY TO ALAIN DUCASSE IF YOU GO:  Spoon+ at Sanderson: 50 Berners St., London, W1P 4AD; phone: 0207 300-1444.  Momo: 25 Heddon St., London, W1; phone: 0207 434-4040.  Veeraswamy: Mezzanine Floor, Victory House, 99 Regent St., London W1B 4RS, (entrance on Swallow St.); phone: 0207 734-1401; on-line: www.veeraswamy.com  Quo Vadis: 26-29 Dean Street, London, W1D 3LL; phone: 0207 437-9585; on-line:www.whitestarline.org.uk/Quo_Vadis_Restaurant.htm  Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s: Corner of Brook and Davies streets, Mayfair, London, W1A 2JQ; phone: 0207 499-0099; online: http://www.the-savoy-group.com/claridges/default.asp

GOURMET LONDON -- PART 8

GORDON RAMSEY TO ALAIN DUCASSE Maybe it was the emotions swelling in us all on such a special occasion, or the intimacy of the private room with our own staff assigned to us, delivering very personal service, or the fact that our wonderful English adventure was drawing to a close. Important things, all. But let’s face it: warm and fuzzy don’t feed the bulldog if the food’s not up to snuff. From the moment our fish knives sliced into the rilette of confit salmon and dill with baby fennel and endive salad, accented with chive crème fraiche, we knew we’d picked the right venue for our gathering. The cool texture and subtle symphony of flavors gently embraced us like a summer’s breeze. This was complemented with an excellent wine selection: Sancerre, Vigne Blanche, Henry Bourgeois, 2002. The main event was a sautéed breast of black leg chicken with baby artichokes barigoule, truffle pomme puree and morel sauce, and was paired with Chateau Haut Gravet, grand cru classe, 1999. Moist and succulent, the chicken was a modern turn on a traditional and hardy offering, pleasing our whole group, which ranged in ages from 6 to 71. The grand finale was an intense and captivating warm chocolate fondant with milk ice cream, chased with smooth-as-silk coffee and dishes of dark chocolate truffles. After our good-byes to family that evening, we headed back to our hotel for a short night’s sleep before our early morning flight. We felt ready to return to Miami, with its tropical fruits and fresh sea food and salsa rhythms. But we knew we’d return to London someday, because a destination is always worth returning to when you know you’ll get a great meal there.

GOURMET LONDON -- PART 7

GORDON RAMSEY TO ALAIN DUCASSE Once at our table, we opted for the two-course fixed-price meal. Steve’s pea risotto with salty ham and hint of mint was to die for. His main course, home-made egg-rich spaghetti, was delightful. Heidi’s roast pork medallions in balsamic sauce was splendidly tender and tasty, sitting on julienne vegetables, and exquisitely flavored by its own juices. This was even more remarkable given that we live in a city where Cuban roast pork is excellent and plentiful; a pork dish must be truly smashing to impress us. At meal’s end, Steve coveted Heidi’s crème Brule, of which a generous portion was served in a shallow terrine. The crispy, savory-sweet, thin crust hid a filling of tangy, farm-fresh raspberries in the dish’s cool center. Yes, the Marco Pierre White name was still grandly earning its well-deserved reputation. But no gourmet tour of London would be complete without a meal at a Gordon Ramsay establishment. Ramsay, another Michelin-starred culinary demi-god with mood swings, has an outlet in the landmark Claridge’s. The hotel, with its stunning art deco décor and magnificent Dale Chihuly chandelier, has long been a favorite with British royalty and European aristocracy. Ramsay’s restaurant seemed the perfect spot for dinner on our final night in London, at which we would gather with family to celebrate a 50th wedding anniversary. With so much expectation resting on this meal, would it be all we dreamed? It was, and so much more.

GOURMET LONDON -- PART 6

GORDON RAMSEY TO ALAIN DUCASSE So far, our London food tour had been spectacular, with an emphasis on the exotic. But what about the English chefs who had made big names for themselves in recent years? For instance, take culinary bad boy Marco Pierre White. These days, with eight highly-touted restaurants in his White Star Line stable and a history of flamboyant behavior, he is a living legend. Larger-than-life, his own cottage industry. We were a bit skeptical. And so we found ourselves standing outside of Quo Vadis, White’s bastion of so-called “modern British” cuisine in Soho. In this very building, set on a relatively quiet side street, Karl Marx once lived. A plaque near the entrance says so. And for much of the 20th century, an Italian restaurant carried on its business within these walls. We arrived just a few minutes before they officially began serving, and were greeted warmly by a pretty, young hostess clad in black clothing and spangly flip-flops. She offered us a seat in the small, clubby lobby, and said she’d return once she’d changed shoes. We took in the sumptuous woodwork and staircase leading up to the space that was once Marx’ apartment but is now the men’s loo. What stood out the most, however, was the instantly recognizable artwork of British bad boy artist Damien Hirst. We were grateful that they consisted of pieces such as giant framed word search puzzles (containing the name Marco Pierre White) and Hirst’s acid-blotter-like, psychedelic-colored circles, rather than slices of livestock embedded in giant Lucite blocks.

GOURMET LONDON -- PART 5

GORDON RAMSEY TO ALAIN DUCASSE After a peek at the menu, we knew that here they respected the traditions of Indian cuisine without being mired in it. The dishes of northern India form a mystical union with Southern India’s curry leaves, tamarind and sesame seeds, the ultimate result being a wondrous selection of Indian “comfort food.” The seafood used in the dishes is impeccably fresh and spices are crushed and prepared daily. Palnitkar told us that the chefs – an executive chef supported by a team of regional specialty chefs -- create new dishes that are rotated through from time to time, their popularity determining whether they make the menu more-or-less permanently. Steve selected the spicy crab cake appetizer and delighted in its dazzling flavor and heat. Steve’s more traditional chicken tikka entrée was done to other-worldly perfection, which he paired nicely with an understated pinot Grigio. Heidi feasted on a delicate chicken samosa appetizer, followed by wonderfully piquant and sizeable prawns in a red curry sauce, served with Basmati rice and complemented with an icy cold Cobra beer. Moist, fluffy naan bread rounded out the main course. If you think that Veeraswamy is like other Indian restaurants that offer a limited and predictable dessert menu predominated by the usual yogurt/honey/cardamom-heavy suspects, think again. An offering of a trio of sorbets reminded us of the tropical flavors so plentiful in Miami. But the topper was the multi-layered, creamy cake that, Palnitkar explained, was painstakingly created layer by individual layer, and garnished with black pepper ice cream. What sounds odd on paper becomes, in reality, a rich, sensationally tasty masterpiece.

GOURMET LONDON -- PART 4

GORDON RAMSEY TO ALAIN DUCASSE OK, so we’d had a good meal. Actually, a fantastic meal. But wasn’t London still predominated by stale-smelling, darkened curry joints with carpeting that had been installed when the Taj Mahal was in pre-construction? We figured finding innovative Indian food would be as challenging as finding a Cuban coffee window in this city. Once again, we found ourselves growing enlightened. The next day we disembarked from a big, red double-decker at Piccadilly, and just off the English equivalent of Times Square we entered an unremarkable office building clad with scaffolding. On the mezzanine level, the elevator door opened and we stepped into a cheerily lighted restaurant called Veeraswamy. No stale carpet smell here: just lacquered walls of purple, green, yellow and other vibrant sari colors. The light from sleek, modern lighting fixtures played delightfully on chrome and gold leaf accents. Not what we expected from the oldest surviving Indian restaurant in the United Kingdom, whose storied history includes visits from Edward, Prince of Wales, Indira Gandhi, Charlie Chaplin and Marlon Brando. Our host, General Manager Vilas Palnitkar, directed us to a pleasant table near a window, from which we could see office workers running errands on lunch hour and men working construction on the building.

GOURMET LONDON -- PART 3

GORDON RAMSEY TO ALAIN DUCASSE Momo is the creation of Mourad “Momo” Mazouz, a Berber restaurateur extraordinaire who rose to fame in Paris before coming to London. Inside, Momo is scintillatingly exotic, an incense-tinged sojourn into 1,001 Arabian Nights that somehow avoids the cheese and campiness endemic to most restaurants of this ilk. Here the effect is authentic, and one becomes pleasantly entranced by the dark woodwork and Moorish-style decorative accents. Because the London weather was gently balmy that day, however, we chose to dine outside beneath sweeping canvas awnings. Our server, decked out in Arabic garb, complete with curled, pointy-toe shoes, was coolly pleasant. (We thought perhaps the shoes had something to do with his attitude.) We perused the menu, taking it all in. Executive chef Mohamed Ourad’s selections are a mélange of North African classic dishes and his own secret family recipes. Steve selected the tagine de poulet aux citrons confits et olives vertes: chicken tagine with lemon confits and green olives: a pungent stew of tender poultry and aromatic spices. The aroma and taste were heavenly. Heidi’s couscous brochette de poulet -- chicken couscous -- was magnificent. Expertly grilled, marinated boneless chicken arrived on a side plate, and was tender enough to cut with a fork. The pieces -- along with a side of lighter-than-air bulger wheat and golden raisins -- are then added to the mini-pot containing the delicious pieces of vegetables and the exquisitely flavorful stew-like sauce to create a sensual culinary symphony. Though the lunch entrees are generous in size, we had to sample the hot-out-of-the-oven quince tart, with sweet, fleshy quince slices atop a scrumptious pie-like crust, served with a dollop of quince ice cream and mint leaves.

GOURMET LONDON -- PART 2

GORDON RAMSEY TO ALAIN DUCASSE Indeed, that is where we had dined, at legendary French chef Alain Ducasse’s Spoon+, located in Ian Schrager’s ultra-hip Sanderson Hotel, an office building-cum-crash pad of cool, courtesy of the designs of the visionary Philippe Starck. Walking in to the lobby and gazing at the sleek lines, out-sized and odd-shaped furniture and funky textures, we’d had a flashback of home. As Miamians, we’d visited The Delano in South Beach, another Schrager/Starck collaboration. We expected amazing food in Miami: a seaside destination of the chic set, blessed with a mind-blowing cultural mosaic. But London? Wasn’t that a stronghold of stodgy carving stations and menus unchanged since the first Queen Elizabeth raised a scepter? Preconceived notions die hard, but once in London, ours were soon tossed into the Charnel House of Culinary Misconceptions, where they landed with a deafening thud. Our foray into the wilds of London’s innovative cuisine scene began with a taxi ride in search of a little street to nowhere. Our cabbie doubted that we’d find what we were looking for on Heddon Street, a road that dead-ends into a pedestrian mallway. But we stayed the course, and sure enough, at the street’s end, we found a Moroccan souk in the heart of Mayfair.

GOURMET LONDON -- PART 1

GORDON RAMSEY TO ALAIN DUCASSE We had died and gone to foodie heaven. That was our verdict, as we nibbled the last bites of the delicate chocolate chip cookies, brought to our table as lagniappe, an offering of “a little something extra” from the chef. Those tasty, baked-to-perfection morsels had been preceded by a most memorable grazing meal – served dim sum style -- of tasty Caesar salad; spicy shrimp brochette, so fresh they crunched aloud, served with pita bread and a creamy, tzatziki dipping sauce; riotously-flavorful Thai rice accented with scallions; creamy, rich, golden whipped potatoes; sea bass with “stockfish” condiment; pan-seared glazed scallops with crispy rice and lemon condiment; clever, chicken wings with Tandoori sauce and wok veggies; warm, miniature donuts with a red berry compote and a chocolate fondant to die for. After concluding the meal, we sat in serene contemplation at our table in the peaceful, green courtyard complete with mini-waterfall. Who knew London was such a dining paradise? London: the capital of all things boiled and de-flavorized.