November 5, 2008

EUROPE | ENGLAND | LONDON

Hell’s Hotelier

By James Wallman

Gordon Ramsay got canned from the Connaught. And now he's out for revenge.

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If you like what Gordon Ramsay does in the kitchen, you might also like what he does in the bedroom. You can find out, now that Ramsay is a hotelier: His 10-room York & Albany has just opened in the leafier end of London’s Camden neighborhood.

His new venture is, unsurprisingly, rooted in a dispute — we are talking, after all, about Mr. F Word himself. Following last year’s renovation, the Connaught reopened without either Ramsay or his executive chef Angela Hartnett, who had helmed the hotel’s Michelin-starred dining room (which bore her name). Ramsay’s reaction? The hot-headed chef and his sidekick struck out on their own (but not without a parting shot about Mayfair’s grande dame: “Their staff walk around with their heads up their arse”).

Naturally, the York & Albany is a restaurant first and hotel second. Hartnett (who lost her Michelin star when she got booted from the Connaught) helms an Italian-inspired restaurant and plans to sell her own Nonna-branded food in the hotel’s deli. But that’s not to say Ramsay isn’t a serious innkeeper — he’s brought in a former manager from Claridge’s to run the townhouse-style hotel. Converted from a 19th-century, John Nash-designed coaching inn and stables, the York & Albany features period antiques and a pair of suites by fashion designer Russell Sage (famed for his “money dress”). The choicest room, however, is the Regency Suite whose terrace overlooks Regent’s Park.

Ramsay isn’t the only star chef converting stables into luxurious lodgings. His great rival Alain Ducasse — the only man with more Michelin stars — is now doing the same at L’Andana, the Tuscan retreat he opened in 2004. An old stable block that formerly belonged to the Duke of Tuscany is being converted into 14 rooms. Those chambers, and the new golf course they will overlook, are set to debut next year.

On the other side of the Atlantic, American phenom Thomas Keller is arriving a little late to the game — but not for lack of trying. For seven-and-a-half years he worked to get permission to build a hotel on his French Laundry property in Napa. Now that he’s got it, he plans to open a 20-room inn with a spa (though ground hasn’t been broken yet). In the end, all the trials of patience could serve Keller well. After all, his Spanish colleague Ferran Adrià, who converted a 10th-century farmhouse into El Bulli Hotel, has conceded: “Doing something magic 24 hours a day is not easy.”