The Case of the Accused Prostitutes at Maze
We make no judgments on Grub Street. We got this e-mail earlier today and read it with raised eyebrows and no great credulousness:
My husband and I were at the New York restaurant, Maze @ the London Hotel tonight 12-18-07. We were so upset. He had four clients he was taking out. At one point one of the clients noticed that there were two prostitutes at the bar, trying to pick up men. When my husband’s guest complained to the staff, they became hostile and asked us to leave. When we talked to the hotel staff, they informed us that, “This happens all the time, You need to talk to the management of Gordon Ramsey.” We were very upset — how could they let that go on? It’s almost like they were getting a cut of their action. We will never dine at a Gordon Ramsey Rest. We spend $800, and had to watch a common prostitute pick up her johns. It was very ugly, shame on Gordon Ramsey and Shame on the London.
Shame indeed! But we have no idea if it was even true. We can never tell prostitutes in hotel bars even when we’re talking to them, let alone from at a table faraway. So we asked the restaurant’s PR agency, who got back to us with this response.
Mediavore
DiFara Fans All at Sea; Gray Kunz Enters the Small-Plate WarsBrooklyn held hostage, day four: DiFara fans reeling from this latest, pointless blow from the Department of Health. “It hurts. It’s the best pizza in my life, ever.” [NYT]
SliceNY uses the DiFara time-out to point out that, in recent months, the Saint of Avenue J has been burning his pizzas pretty badly around the edges. [SliceNY]
Gray Kunz’s new small-plates restaurant, Grayz, joins a growing number of such restaurants run by lesser beings. [Diner’s Journal/NYT]
NewsFeed
Ramsay’s London Bar to Modernize As Maze
Though visitors to London often find Gordon Ramsay’s namesake restaurant there to be as much of a snooze as the one here, they frequently rave about the edgy cooking done at Maze, Ramsay’s modernist outpost helmed by El Bulli alumni Jason Atherton in Grosvenor Square. Given that Ramsay’s London Bar here in New York is even less talked about than Gordon Ramsay at the London, it makes sense, then, that the the former will soon be rebranded as Maze, and fitted out with a much more modern menu. Or so a source with access to Ramsay inner circles tells us. Ramsay’s PR people deny that anything is in the works, and it’s not clear whether Atherton or Gordon Ramsay NYC executive chef Josh Emett will be running the kitchen, but expect to see more Maze-like dishes, which look far more exciting, at least from its Website menus. If that’s the kind of thing that’s coming to New York, a buzz spike will be as sure as it is deserved.