HotelChatter

It's Ramsay's first restaurant in France after building up a string of ten Michelin stars all over London, Ireland, the US, Dubai and Japan.

He's taken over room service, banqueting and a more casual 75-seat Veranda restaurant as well as the gastro Trianon restaurant. The full works. He wants three Michelin stars for this place. And he's nervous as a lobster about to be put to the boil. "This is the one I'll be judged on. This is the cradle of haute cuisine," he said, perpetuating a long-held myth about French cooking.

French F*!ing and B&?ing
But the critics have taken a page from Ramsay's swearword dictionary and have pulled out all the stops to damn Gordon Ramsay at Trianon, despite the restaurant not even being open to the public yet. "If Gordon Ramsay has come to Paris, it's just to find out what those f^&%*)g Frenchies think about his f$&^!*g cooking."

"He's le bad boy de la cuisine anglaise", they shouted, calling his bleep-ridden Hell's Kitchen reality TV show "vulgar, macho, out-of-place". The best, however, was the well-known French critic François Simon's faint but sharply painful praise of Ramsay's style as 'agréable' (vaguely pleasant). For a chef with sky-high pretentions, that really hurts.

The Trianon Palace
The hotel itself is one of those places rich businessmen and Starwood Preferred Guests take their fiancées or wannabe fiancées for the night. 17 miles out of Paris, it's more like a museum than a hotel. They've squeezed 100 rooms and suites into the recently-renovated historic Palace building, and the overflow get shunted into the new 99-room Pavilion. WiFi at a price.

The biggest draw seems to be the Spa Trianon, rather extravagantly described as a "kingdom", with the usual massages, facials, and soothing hydrotherapy sessions and a heated indoor pool. But hold your horses - it's shut for renovation until beginning of May 2008, along with the fitness centre.

Rates run from €300 ($460) for a small double room in the new Pavilion building to €800 ($1230) for a Palace suite, with various deals for dinner and breakfast being included. This place ain't for peasants.

French Etiquette
So how do you think the clientele will get on with Gordon Ramsay's brutal style? "It's got off to a cracking start in France and I'm crossing everything for good luck," he said. "I've even tied a knot in my dick." Oh dear. Never mind haute cuisine, Monsieur Ramsay, that's not really haute conversation.

[Photo via News.com.au]