Their food is the least important aspect of what I enjoy. By the time they have achieved a significant degree of celebrity, they have generally sold out, such that finding a kitchen actually led by one of them is about as common as finding a modern-day general accompanying a platoon of infantry into battle.
No matter. I enjoy the commercial effluvia of the decadent, late-capitalist stage of their careers much more than I would enjoy eating the food that made them famous. I mean the television shows, the ghostwritten autobiographies, even the meals at their crappy branded restaurants: and not just the vaguely respectable ones that adhere to some semblance of a fine dining standard. I mean the ones run by the lieutenants of their lieutenants’ lieutenants, the kind you find in airport terminals. A personal low point was eating at Gordon Ramsay’s Plane Food at Heathrow, something I am confident Gordon himself has not done since the photo-op on opening day. If he even showed up.
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