Restaurant Gordon Ramsay

Chef's Diary

This year the seasons have changed so fast and autumn is here already! Grouse is back in season along with ceps and Muscat grapes arriving, but I will be holding on for a few weeks until they are at their best. I am always working on new dishes and we have found some wonderful pork from the Gloucester Old Spot pig which comes from a small producer in Suffolk. The flavour is amazing, just how pork should taste!

Developing a new dish can take as little as one day or sometimes you can be thinking of it for a whole year. The flavour of the lamb dish that we have recently added to the menu I have had in my mind for over a year now. Whilst thinking of how to develop the classic ‘Navarin’ stew of lamb my mouth would water every time. The trick is to establish how to take a rustic French classic and refine it into a dish to be served in a three star restaurant without losing any of the robust flavour.

Flavour is the starting point of any dish. Then we create combinations that complement and enhance each other so the final result is 1+1=10! We exhaust all combinations before settling on the final dish and often find ourselves taking ingredients away to improve it. This can intensify the flavours already there and the quality of the ingredients we use are so good that we really want them to speak for themselves.

Once a dish has been created the next step is to teach the team how to produce it consistently during service and which chef will be doing what part of the dish at which precise moment. The strength of the team is the most important part, after the guests of course! It takes a long time to train each person and they will learn one section of the kitchen before moving on to the next. There are sixteen chefs in our brigade, all of whom are very ambitious. We continue to develop their skills until they are ready to move on to the next stage of their career, whatever that might be. The team are very close, like a band of brothers. They spend all day, every day together, learning different skills from one another with the more experienced team members passing on their knowledge. However it is not always so straightforward, ‘I burnt it’, ‘I dropped it’, ‘I ate it’, ‘ I lost it’ or ‘I forgot to order it’ CHEF are but a few of the problems I can be faced with at any moment!

Chefs display the trademarks of certain styles of cooking that they have learned from the restaurants that they have worked in. It takes many years to be a great chef and the more you work on it the better you become until you have developed your own style and signature dishes. I have already seen a few of my team move on and we still share the same philosophy for food. They have learnt from me and it makes me incredibly proud to see them do well!

The Chef's Diaries are updated on a regular basis by Restaurant Gordon Ramsay Head Chef Clare Smyth.

To view the June 2010 Chef's diary entry please click here.

To view the March 2010 Chef's diary entry please click here.

For more information on Master classses with Clare please click here.

To view the November 2009 Chef's diary entry please click here.

To view the October 2009 Chef's diary entry please click here.

To view the August 2009 Chef's diary entry please click here.

To view the July 2009 Chef's diary entry please click here.