April 17 (Bloomberg) -- Gordon Ramsay’s dishes for Foxtrot Oscar and the chef’s pubs are prepared at a central kitchen in a London suburb and delivered to his eateries each day, the Sun reported under the headline, “Ramsay Serves Up Coq au Van.”

A reporter posing as a potential customer approached the manager of GR Logistics, in Clapham, and was offered cook-in-a- bag coq au vin for 2.60 pounds ($3.85), fishcakes for 1.92 pounds and sausage rolls for 3.50 pounds, the paper said. “Foxtrot Smoked Fishcakes” are on the menu at Foxtrot Oscar for 9.95 pounds, according to Ramsay’s Web site.

Ramsay, whose company owns restaurants from Los Angeles to Tokyo, wasn’t available for comment. His spokeswoman, Jo Barnes, said it was normal practice for eateries with small kitchens to prepare dishes offsite and then cook them to order. She said Gordon Ramsay Holdings bought the kitchen from the Roux family, owners of Le Gavroche.

“This isn’t a guilty secret at all, far from it,” Barnes said today in a telephone interview. “Gordon Ramsay purchased the facility with the express aim of keeping dishes to the high standard he wants to maintain, with Ramsay-trained chefs producing his dishes. This is common in the business.”

She said components of some dishes were freshly cooked each day and transported in refrigerated vans to the pubs and Foxtrot Oscar because of their small kitchens. Other Ramsay restaurants weren’t involved, she said.

Michel Roux Jr. of Le Gavroche confirmed that the Roux family sold the kitchen to Ramsay about two years ago.

“We used it mainly for our outside catering firm, not for the restaurant,” Roux said in a telephone interview. “But we did get puff pastry from there. In fact, we still do.”

Three Pubs

In addition to Foxtrot Oscar, a casual eatery next to Ramsay’s flagship restaurant in Chelsea, the chef has three pubs: the Narrow, the Warrington and the Devonshire. Another restaurateur, David Moore, who holds two stars for Pied a Terre and one for L’Autre Pied, wasn’t surprised by a central kitchen.

“A Ramsay kitchen is a skilled kitchen, but certain types of food can be cooked offsite without compromising quality,” he said. “There’s lots of really clever technology out there to hold the quality and serve it at the right temperature.

‘‘I don’t see anything wrong with the techniques they’re using. The pubs just need to be a bit more up front that everything isn’t prepared on the premises. But the margins he’s getting are certainly very interesting,” Moore said.

Gemma Tuley, who headed the kitchen when Foxtrot Oscar opened in January 2008, didn’t return a call seeking comment.

“Our mantra has always been ‘keep it simple and make it tasty’ and that’s exactly what we wanted to deliver in the pubs,” Ramsay says in his new book, “Gordon Ramsay’s Great British Pub Food.”

(Richard Vines is the chief food critic for Bloomberg News. Opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on the story: Richard Vines in London at rvines@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: April 17, 2009 08:28 EDT