Ballad of El Gordo

Besha Bashes Gordon Ramsay’s Fat Cow

“A science experiment gone wrong?” Photo: KevinEats

The only potential surprise awaiting in a N.Y. Times review of Guy Fieri’s Times Square tourist-trap would have been any kind of resulting rave. But no matter what a colossal douche he depicts on television (or with his fellow chefs), Gordon Ramsay possesses a nearly equal amount of talent as he does venomous spew, leading one to believe there could be promising aspects at his new restaurant at The Grove. Not so, writes Besha Rodell today, labeling Gordo’s The Fat Cow as his biggest sell-out to date. Though the cocktails aren’t “half-bad” and she enjoys a grilled organic salmon, the critic deems the braised lamb in a shepherd’s pie just a notch above “industrial grade,” compares a branzino ceviche to “a science experiment gone wrong,” and dubs the project “lowest-common-denominator food, made without soul, and banking on celebrity.” And that’s at twice the price of “a standard American mall meal.”

Rodell storms out of Ramsay’s hellish kitchen by asking, “What galls is the act of misleading…people who are curious about all the hype given to food these days…The hoodwinking of those customers is the real reason this restaurant is more offensive than the sum of its not-very-good parts.”

Fat Cow? Fat Chance. Gordon Ramsay’s New Grove Restaurant Disappoints [SI]

Earlier: First Look at Gordon Ramsay’s The Fat Cow, Opening Monday at The Grove [GS]

Besha Bashes Gordon Ramsay’s Fat Cow