Love-him-or-hate-him-Ramsay has been undisputed king of the London restaurant scene for nearly ten years. Take a large measure of chefly talent, whisk it with lashings of colourful personality, and then cook up with a generous helping of business acumen, and you have got an almost unstoppable catering brand. Anything à la Ramsay is bound to generate media and public interest, and the former footballer now has no less than nine outlets in London alone. And then there?s the books and the TV shows?

Harden?s guide book reckons that therein lies the rub ? the super chef is simply ?spreading himself too thinly?, perhaps causing public confidence in the brand to slip. You cannot be hands on at multiple branches simultaneously. Peter Harden himself seems to feel that Ramsay?s days at the top are numbered:

Mr Harden likened Ramsay's predicament to that of the precarious position of the last Roman emperor "just before the barbarians piled in".

Londonist feels that this is a bit dramatic. We feel sure that our Gordon is working his gastronomic magic to as high a standard as ever. The truth is that the British public has an innate sense of fair play, supporting the underdog and that sort of thing. Ten years of top notch stuff is all well and good, but let?s see who else is out there now. Time to give someone else a chance?.

We don?t think that Ramsay has anything to lose sleep over. The young chefs emerging from catering college today will almost certainly have been inspired in some small way by the Ramsay story ? his culinary genes are more or less indelibly stamped on the industry for the foreseeable future.

Only vaguely relevant but nevertheless highly delicious looking image courtesy of ComeUndone?s flickr stream