Guillotine for Gordon Ramsay at Trianon Palace
Gordon Ramsay's opening a restaurant this Wednesday (26 March) at Trianon Palace, a grand old mansion hotel in Versailles just outside Paris.
Can you think of a more incongruous mix? The foul-mouthed Scottish chef in the tea-and-china tinkling mansion where the Treaty of Versailles was drawn up in 1919. At the entrance to the three-acre manicured park which contains the deceased French royal family's 17th-century Chateau de Versailles - think ladies-in-waiting, extravagant masked balls and feathery blancmange-shaped dresses.
The hotel's staffed by an army of stiff concierges and doormen - judging from the look of some of them, they've kept quite a few of the original staff. It's frequented by the snootier members of the French upper classes - think Marie Antoinette & co but slightly better-smelling.
But in another way, Gordon Ramsay at Trianon is not incongruous but an entirely appropriate choice: the Chateau de Versailles is a symbol of Louis XIV's absolute, brutal monarchy in the same way that Ramsay lords it over his kingdom-sized kitchens.
