http://www.nypost.com/seven/02112009/entertainment/food/ram__say_it_aint_so_154561.htm

 WHEN I called Gordon Ramsay at the London NYC Hotel last week to reserve a Friday-night table, a recorded male voice with a British accent spelled out the restaurant's booking policy - for Christmas and New Year's Eve. Is the place behind the times, or has time passed Ramsay by for good? Gordo was once a great chef. Then he became a great businessman.

Today he's more like a great big clown, with daily headline embarrassments of one sort or another - from a blabbering ex-mistress to an infantile feud with Mario Batali.

If globetrotting, "rock-star" chefs have become a joke, Ramsay is becoming the ultimate punch line.

TV BLOG: Gordon Ramsay, Big Weenie

He was signing copies of his new cookbook at the Time Warner Center yesterday. Meanwhile, a few blocks south, his flagship restaurant lay empty and still. It stopped serving lunch a few months ago - not that anyone noticed outside of a few disappointed Brits on holiday.

Some other pricey hotelbased eateries gave up on lunch, too. But when one of the world's reigning culinary gods - a household name with a batch of Michelin stars, three TV shows (including Fox's popular "Kitchen Nightmares" and "Hell's Kitchen") and a zillion revenue streams - can't fill a 14-table room for lunch a few days a week, look out.

Dinner last Friday was better than mediocre. Three wonderful appetizers, one splendid entree and two merely good ones, a generous extra course and pleasant but unspectacular desserts are a fair enough average at most expensive Manhattan restaurants.

Service was sweet and caring.

But for $630.50 for three, with one bottle of wine? Yup, thanks to a jump in the cost of the basic three-course dinner from $80 to $110 in just over two years.

If you forgot that Ramsay has a restaurant here, you're not alone. (It's not to be confused with Maze, his reasonably priced and often buzzing bar/ lounge off the hotel lobby.)

Zagat Survey publisher Tim Zagat says, "I thought he was going to be a major player here. But I think his restaurant has become essentially a cipher in the New York dining community."(Leave it to tactful Tim to come up with a diplomatic synonym for "zero.")