After the fuss about Gordon Ramsay’s Asian restaurant, there’s an easy way to avoid controversy over authenticity. Be delicious
A few weeks ago, Gordon Ramsay received championship levels of eye-rolling from people in the online food world for announcing he was to gift London an “authentic Asian eating house” called Lucky Cat. There were reasonable grounds for scepticism. For example, the head chef, Ben Orpwood, comes to this exercise from experience at the glistening, chrome and marble money pit that is Sexy Fish, and before that Zuma. Knocking out plates of raw spicy tuna to plutocrats with botoxed foreheads and Swarovski-clad iPhones is not the same as having spent your whole career deep in the food culture of Osaka. Obviously, I’ve never seen a passing bandwagon I couldn’t leap on; I eye-rolled with the best of them.
Ramsay’s mistake was to use one word: “authentic”. If he’d described it as an Asian “inspired” restaurant he’d probably have been fine. Instead, with his customary bull-headed self-confidence, he dropped the A-bomb. Immediately it was open season. There are a bunch of labels like this in the food and drink world which set off sirens. There are wines described as “natural”, which the wine world thinks I hate on principle. It’s true I have massive problems with the misuse of language. As human beings are a natural occurrence on planet Earth, everything we do is natural, including Pop-Tarts and advocaat. Likewise, I have expressed huge antipathy towards sixth-wave artisanal coffee gurus and their declaration that coffee beans are a fruit which should be lightly roasted, producing an espresso tasting of lemon juice.
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