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.