My 40th Birthday at the Foxtrot Oscar

I am not a chef. I am a photographer and media producer with a music background and as diverse as I try to present my own work, I keep a diverse set of things that influence me. Gordon Ramsay has always been a hero of mine. I first saw him years ago on his American debut as an angry reality host who put young chefs through the ringer. Upon further investigation I found that this terse character had (at the time) 5 Michelin stars — to date he’s got 13.

Okay so the guy can cook right? At this point in my investigation I’ve got no way of going to one of his restaurants, so I ordered a cookbook of his off of Amazon and found a few podcasts he’d done for Chanel 4 preparing dishes. My God if this wasn’t an eye opener. For starters cooking is not easy. Well cooking is easy, but cooking perfectly is not. Having a podcast of my own I really found myself enjoying Gordon’s teaching style. Its inspirational in the way he presents his energy, encouragement, standards of perfection and he has fun with the whole thing. I get the impression he really loves to share his passion. I became inspired — I wanted to bring these qualities to my own craft of photography and filmmaking down to how I even produce my own podcast. I’m no Gordon Ramsay, but he keeps me striving to make things better all the time.

This year my fiancé and I decided to go to London for my 40th birthday which also happened to be Thanksgiving day. We decided we had to go to at least one Gordon Ramsay restaurant to celebrate the week (we had plans to go to several). Well London is by far the most expensive city I’ve ever been to and we don’t make tons of money so we only made it to one. And one of the cheaper ones at that. But its what we could afford and it impressed me enough to do this post.

We picked the Foxtrot Oscar for Sunday dinner. Its a smaller 3 course kind of place but it really sounded good. Plus I love the name. Foxtrot Oscar is the intellectual way of saying, “Fuck off”. Very Gordon, very irreverent and very compelling.

We jumped on the Tube and headed to Sloane Square and walked through the cold and fog excitedly down to Royal Hospital Road and made our way to the restaurant. I was buzzing. I’ve never in my life been this excited to eat somewhere. After a 10 minute walk we arrived. The place is tiny but had a warm, modern class to it that never felt too crowded or tight. Low lighting, quiet contemporary music and beautiful black and white photographs make a lovely decor.

At this point I have to make an important comment. Say what you want about Ramsay but the service was absolutely outstanding. I’ve never in my life had better service than I did at one of Ramsay’s smaller “grills”. The hungarian waiter was friendly, polite, knowledgeable and honest when we asked for recommendations. My fiancé saw some tables enjoying Sunday roast and asked if it was possible to get despite not being on the menu. The waiter explained that you needed to order the roast when you made your reservation due to limited kitchen size. He then offered that if we waited a few minutes he would take another tables order to see if someone had changed their mind to order something else. After 2 minutes he returned to tell us we were in luck. There were 2 roasts not chosen at the large group who had just placed their orders.

Well we couldn’t both get the same thing! How can you try 2 dishes if you get 2 of the same… so I decided to get the beef onglet (hanger steak). The waiter said this was best cooked medium rare and I took his suggestion.

Everything was perfect. Much like the service, the food was prepared to the same tight standards that you can tell the place was put together with. Both the roast and the onglet were fairly conventional in recipe. Nothing fancy or pretentious — and they were cooked and seasoned to absolute perfection. And for the record they made the biggest home made chips I’ve ever had — simply delicious.

We went on to enjoy some wonderful deserts (apple crumble and gingerbread) along with a recommended hungarian desert wine from the waiters home country. All were absolutely divine.

Now describing food in a blog post is probably horribly ineffective — especially considering I’m neither a writer nor a food critic. However I’ve wanted to experience a Ramsay restaurant first hand for years now. It was like Christmas Eve for me to go to this place and it didn’t disappoint.

On another note — I read Gordon’s book last year for the first time and the man is a complete inspiration. He came from a challenging background and is one of the few chefs that have turned cooking into celebrity. And he’s done it on pure talent. There aren’t many people of his stature that actually deliver any goods but he does in spades. I mean 13 Michelin stars?!? 20 years ago many would have thought that to be impossible and today it damn near still is.

Gordon — thank you. You are an inspiration.

About 3 years ago I passed this place late at night on my way to go do some long exposure photographs of Battersea Power Station in the rain. At the time I was completely broke but wondered what eating there would be like. I finally found out and it didn’t disappoint. Next trip to the UK I’ll be saving to have a meal at Maze or Restaurant Gordon Ramsay.

But for this weekend? Gordon’s “Bolognaise” recipe for the colder weather…