Former Gordon Ramsay restaurant to become 'Table9'

Following the news earlier this week that Gordon Ramsay had ended the partnership with Verre by Gordon Ramsay at Hilton Dubai Creek, executive chef Scott Price and head chef Nick Alvis have announced that they will take over the restaurant and relaunch it as Table9 on November 9.

The new restaurant will have a more relaxed environment and instead of having a traditional menu consisting of three-courses, it will offer a wide range of “accessible food”.

“We’re going to cater for people who want to come in and have a glass of wine with their friends after work and have one or two dishes, as well as for those who want to come in for an anniversary dinner with their wife or your husband and have a big six or seven course taster menu,” explained Price.

“We’re going to have a large range of wines by the glass – around 50 – and we have an amazing sommelier to match all the wines to the food so if you want to come in and have three different dishes with three different glasses of wine you can.”

He went on to explain: “We’ve got the pressure on as we’re taking over the restaurant, and it’s not just any restaurant. But the bar has always been very high while we’ve been working for Gordon, and that’s not going to change just because the restaurant is changing. It’s not going to change how we work or our standards.”

“We are aiming it at a slightly different type of consumer. At the moment we attract Gordon Ramsay fans and people that come out for a fine dining experience. Our concept isn’t so much fine dining, but the quality of the food is staying the same, the service is staying the same – we are just going to evolve the restaurant in our own way. We’ve got a new restaurant manager, apart from that the whole team is the same – the only thing that’s not going to be there is Gordon Ramsay.

Price and Alvis will still be employed by Hilton in their roles, the only difference being they now have their own outlet in the hotel too.

“We’ve had so much support from Hilton with the redesign of the restaurant,” explained Price. “They’ve been very, very good to us. We’ve worked with their branding and marketing team on things we didn’t know much about – like picking uniforms and choosing shoes.”

The last service at Ramsay’s Verre will be on the 28th October. A spokesperson for Gordon Ramsay Holdings said: “After a regular review of our commercial operations we have decided the time is right to end our consultancy agreement. We would like to thank the team at Verre for the 10-year partnership, it’s a superb restaurant and we wish them all the best for the future.”