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.