Anthea Gerrie's Blog

Posted by Anthea Gerrie

Who would have thought Jamie Oliver had it in him to be politicall incorrect?

Britain's highest-profile celebrity chef is more inclined to good works - his catering

enterprise Fifteen was devoted to turning idle, unmotivated teenagers into chefs,

while he will likely get a knighthood one day for having forced the UK government

to confront the issue of malnourished children raised on junk food and invest more in

school dinners and teaching dinner-ladies to cook healthy ingredients from scratch.

Perhaps he's having a little light relief with Road Kill Cafe, made for the BBC's alternative

youth television channel BBC3 by his production company, Fresh One. While we won't

actually see our Jamie skinning squirrels or picking badgers up off the tarmac to barbecue,

we will see his mate and celebrity forager-cum-roadkill-chef Fergus Drennan doing the same or worse. According to BBC3 controller Julian Bellamy, the only animals off-limits are rats and

domestic pets.

Astonishingly, Drennan himself is a vegetarian - and fellow veggies will be catered for

in the series by a soup of seaweed scraped up off the Kent beaches.

Posted by Anthea Gerrie

Theo Randall has his work cut out trying to make his name at London's Intercontinental Hotel -

even though his name was practically unknown when he was head chef at the legendary River Cafe. There's still a stigma about hotel dining, even though Gordon Ramsay, Nico Ladenis and Bruno Loubet cracked it at the Berkeley, Grosvenor House and Inn on the Park respectively.

But all three had already made their reps in their own restaurants.....while Theo was a partner in the River Cafe, Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray enjoyed all the credit for the dishes created there. However, who would have thought a works canteen in Hammersmith could achieve cult status followed by worldwide fame? That's how River Cafe started life, catering for the staff of Ruth's husband, uber-architect Lord Richard Rogers. And you wonder what would have happened if they had suddenly lost their lease, as so nearly happened a few weeks ago, when Lord Rogers's former partner announced his desire to sell the entire complex. He brought a £10m court action to enforce that right - and disaster has only just been averted with an out of court settlement.

They survived the loss of River Cafe's then sous-chef Jamie Oliver years ago. Now it remains to be seen whether Hammersmith diners notice the absence of Theo at the hob.

Posted by Anthea Gerrie

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver is looking at New York locations for a restaurant of his own, hot on the heels of Gordon Ramsay's late November opening of Gordon Ramsay at the London, according to reports on BBCAmerica online.

The story originated in the Daily Mail, where reports say Oliver is scoping out the trendy SoHo district, while Ramsay's new posh resto is in the aptly named Hell's Kitchen area.

"I've looked at a few sites and I'm seriously thinking about it," Oliver told the Daily Mail. "I was having a look around and there's something about New York that's very sexy."

Stay tuned.

Posted by Anthea Gerrie

Gordon Ramsay had not yet opened the doors of his new restaurant at the London Hotel when I

was in New York a few weeks ago, so I am not in a position to judge whether he is dishing up the right stuff. But although I instinctively feel he knows his market, and has created some masterful dishes, I fear he is spreading himself too thin running around the globe. I was disappointed both in Tokyo this spring, where dishes at the Gordon Ramsay restaurant in the Conrad failed to push any buttons, and horrified in London to have to wait 90 minutes for the main course to arrive at a business lunch in Claridges, even though the dining room was barely more than half-full.

You can imagine Gordon creating hell had he watched lacklustre dishes moving off the pass line in Tokyo or heavenly ones not moving off the pass line at all in Claridges. But he wasn't there.

I would love to hear some first-hand experiences of whether, Emmy now in hand, he's going to be able to take Manhattan, where there's more competition for the diner's dollar than anywhere else in the world.