London House, Battersea

I dug the dive bar at Ramsbo's Union Street Cafe. Will Gordon grab me again with his latest gaff, London House? Problemo: I'm not big on Battersea, on account of having been banished there - weeping, wailing, pilled-up to the pituitary gland on anti-depressants - when I couldn't afford the rent in Chelsea. That was back when the King's Road (hard as this is to believe to anyone under 30) was an eye-poppingly cool street style catwalk not yet overrun by Ollie, Golly, Binky, Stinky, Caggy, Slaggy and other scripted reality show Muppetry. Nowadays, once-grim Battersea is touted as South Chelsea, its cut glass accents as sharp as the blades toted by trouble on the notorious Winstanley Estate during my enforced exile. SW11's flush residents will be manna to Ramsay on a notoriously difficult site that has seen off others, most recently blink-and-you-missed-it Bennett's Oyster Bar and Brasserie. Problemo numero 2: I'm not big on drinking in rooms that look like the set for a remake of 80s OAP sitcom Waiting For God.The lounge - tasteful as it is in Prussian blue, cumin and ox-blood upholstery, warmed by a flame effect fire - is an ante room divorced from the out-of-shot bar's theatre. Make that a great-auntie room, given the age of some of the leather bags loitering after lunch when I drop in. Still, drinks such as Garden of Eden (Elmer T. Lee bourbon, apple and lavender shrub, Kummel and celery soda) and Flying Scotsman (Clynelish Distillers Edition malt, honey, bitters and lapsang souchon smoke) make the safari south worthwhile. Polished, enthusiastic service and realistic pricing - £8 for gin fizz - should also help assure its success. Me? I'm soon itching to get back to my reality, even if, priced out of prime Chelsea, the Spencer Matthew classes are encroaching on my manor now. Totes traj!

7 - 9  Battersea Square SW11 3RA 7592 8545 http://www.gordonramsay.com/london-house/

Union Street Cafe Bar : Southwark

'Gordon would like to personally invite you and a guest to celebrate the opening of Union Street café' (note the oh-so quirky lower case 'c'). This sounds ominous. I fear if I show up at Ramsay's latest launch (given my often barbed comments about the world's greatest living chefebrity that stretch back to my first less-than-ideal experience at Aubergine, some 20 years ago) I'll be toast - as in skewered, basted, griddled and served up on it as an amuse-bouche. Compounding matters, the guest I invite claims to have once had a run-in with he who bestrides continents, rescuing other people's Mickey Mouse catering establishments, when he's not in his whites, effin' and cheffin' in one of his own successes. This could be hashtag-awkward as they say. Fortunately, the downstairs bar at USc is overseen by a friendly face - perennially chipper chappy, Abdulai Kpekawa (pictured), lately of the lovely Luggage Room (see http://tinyurl.com/mbwujoq) next door to el Gordo's not-particularly amazing Maze bar. If things turn nasty and knives (Gordon Ramsay by Royal Doulton, available online) fly, I'll use him as a human shield. In mitigation, may I say, I have already visited USc's bar ahead of tonight's official launch stramash and, to paraphrase Big Sweary himself, thought, ''F*** me! Here's one of his gaffs I'm finally able to enthuse about' (if not now hang out in, on the grounds I have likely just got myself barred for my cheek). Cocktails, from £8.50, include sophisticated calls Camino de Agricultores (cognac, Pedro Ximinez, chocolate bitters and lemon juice), and the Duke Meets the Queen (a Rinquinquin, Gewürtztraminer, white grappa, and porter syrup Collins). But before you make a mental note to try 'em, please also note that the list is to be changed weekly, I'm told. On past form, for Kepkawa, who also did a stint at ECC, that will be a doddle. The room, a post-nuclear concrete bunker, has been gussied up by Russell Sage Studio  in one of those overnight miracles performed on Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares to universal adoration, I like to imagine. The style is postmodern London loft lite: deep sofas for slouchy posing, large leather ottoman stools reminiscent of an SM club's ahem, workbenches (I'm told), and the sort of graffiti/ urban wall-hangings that a first year art student at Kingston or Epsom would be proud of. Innovative? Hmm. But it hangs together well and, for the sort of awed rubberneckers drawn to Ramsay's joints, it will no doubt represent the height of urban cool. So, does Ramsay rip off my cojones when I show up at the party? His mate Jonathon Ross in tow, the great man strides in, as megastars do, hours late for his own gig, and is instantly swamped by beaming hem-touchers. He turns his head. I wince. He looks straight through me. 'Personally invited?' Gordon clearly doesn't know me from a gourd. Let's keep it that way, eh?    
Union Street Cafe, 47 -51 Great Suffolk Street SE1 0BS 7592 7997   

The Luggage Room, Mayfair

Grosvenor Square doesn't figure much in my life: I've no desire to queue again outside Fortress America in the hope of landing a work permit (been there; done that; bought the t-shirt), and my chauffeur has never been instructed to programme the co-ordinates of gobby Gordon's Maze into my Bentley's in-car Bardar (been there; done that; wouldn't buy the t-shirt). Actually, I made up the bit about the Bentley. I'm a Beemer drop-top bloke (it fits more with my sad fantasy of myself as Frank Sinatra as Pal Joey, running around in an expensive trinket gratefully gifted for services rendered, singing The Lady Is A Tramp ). According to tonight's destination's PRs, The Bentley Boys are the inspiration for this brand new Grosvenor Square bar, The Luggage Room. Apparently, the Bentley Boys were car-crazy Mayfair socialites - forerunners of today's Made In Chelsea chumps, out to impress the 1920s equivalents of Milly, Silly, Caggy and Slaggy with acts of derring-do on the Great West Road. Some of the drinks - such as gin, grapefruit bitters and absinthe martini, Baron André d’Erlanger, are named after members of their set - the Baron, a banker at £14.50. Otherwise, try Hanky Panky, Penicillin and Aviation, similarly on-the-money retro rinses in  served in vintage stemware with complimentary salted snacks that verge on the addictive. I'm less hooked on a salmon caviar and sour cream scotch egg hybrid -  too cold, curiously bland, no improvement on the bog standard job, and too steep at £15 - from a range of trying-too-hard faffy-fiddly ideas presented in twiddly twee containers. The basement suite occupied by The Luggage Room was ("no shit, Sherlock?") once the temporary resting place for monogrammed valises belonging to grand old baggages in residence at the Marriott Hotel above. The rooms' tiramisu-tone art deco-inspired decor - think drinking inside a Vuitton steamer trunk lined in ivory silk grosgrain - is sophisticated and easy-on-the-eye. So too, its staff. I'm not generally much of a Marriott man - their Kensington gaff as soulless as any you'll find - but I know a good bar when I see one.Tweak the food offer, dim the lights, and I might just join the Bentley Boys' gang. 
London Marriott Grosvenor Square, W1K 6JP 7514 1679 http://luggageroom.co.uk/

Post-script: on a subsequent visit , the lighting had been so successfully tweaked, even those faces sporting the afterglow of Harley Street chemical peel will look as blemish-free as an airbrushed Kate Moss.

Bread Street Kitchen Bar, The City

If the shouty chef is your bag, you can buy into the brand for a tenner at this compact street level bar, the portal to Gordon Ramsay's City juggernaut upstairs. To Russell Sage Studio’s witty design for the main act - a fantasy art nouveau brasserie that’s somewhere between Caro and Jeunet’s Delicatessen and Amélie Poulain -  are added pommel and vault horses (presumably borrowed from Dumbdown Abbey's gymnasium) as seating/ amuses yeux. Watching one determined wee boulder in a too-tight short black skirt squiffily attempt to hoik herself up on to just such an item while retaining her dignity, is the best laugh I've had today since hearing Fred the Shred's title was 'toast.'  Martinis such as the signature Grey Goose cinnamon-infused Bread Street (shaken with hazelnuts, grapes, apple and lime) - about right at £9 or thereabouts -  and the house take on mojito (muddle with pears)  are conjured up by efficient, rather than particularly effusive, staff.  On the coldest night of the year, many will be happy to encounter hot toddy and BSK Blaze (raisin-infused whiskey, pineapples, apples, pears and coconut liqueuer flamed with cinnamon). A good range of 30 wines by the glass from £4.50  includes fine claret and top notch Burgundy at £25 plus for Square Mile dealers. A disappointingly terse bar snacks menu offers three different toppings on pizzetta, meatballs in tomato sauce and cured meats. In the absence of any cheffy effin' and blindin'  coming from the kitchens, we conclude Big Sweary is not in da house, tonight. Maybe the gallant one has ridden to the rescue of yet another roadkill-serving kitsch inn's kitchen in Kentucky? How does he manage it all?

10 Bread Street EC4M 9AB www.breadstreetkitchen.com 

from my review at www.squaremeal.co.uk