Patsey Murphygoes for a 'trial feeding' at the Gordon Ramsay restaurant in Powerscourt, and watches 270 hotel staff at a pep rally, designed to rack up team spirit the day before the latest five-star hotel opens its doors.
We are such suckers for celebrity. Ever since it was announced that Gordon Ramsay was lending his name to the restaurant at the new Ritz-Carlton in Enniskerry, Co Wicklow, they've had more than 3,000 inquiries, according to its general manager, Andrew Nasskau. This is despite the fact that they don't know exactly when Ramsay will fly in again later this month. (He's filming in LA at the moment and has restaurants opening in Prague in November and in Paris and LA early in the new year.)
The hottest spot to book is the chef's table, where 10 thrill-seekers can oversee the action in the kitchen, with the price starting at €1,500. But voyeurs must be patient. The chef's table, modelled on the one at Claridge's, is unlikely to be available until the kitchen staff have settled into their surroundings. The restaurant proper will seat 82, including two rooms for private parties of up to 16.
The restaurant's manager is Sasha Holzkamper, who comes from a two-Michelin-star restaurant in Maastricht. He looks so much like the wisecracking actor John Cusack that you think he is joking when he snaps your napkin into a sharp triangle and places it in your lap. We are here for a "trial feeding", three days before the opening, and everything from service to presentation, pace and flavour is under scrutiny. Our fellow diners, most of them wearing white coats, are frowning a lot and taking copious notes. They are among 40 trainers from hotels all over the world flown in to indoctrinate the Powerscourt crew, from pot-scrubbers and bellhops to housekeepers and security staff. Everyone is getting a taste, including a table of chambermaids, in grey uniforms and white aprons.
Ramsay classics are on the menu - lobster ravioli as a starter, and venison served with chocolate sauce. For lunch, two courses will start at €35; €65 à la carte. Three-course dinners will be about €80. Ramsay's right-hand man, Mark Askew, arrives to oversee the final weekend of training, and long hours are anticipated. It's a lockdown.
We are sitting by a window overlooking the Sugarloaf, with fleets of lorries and earthmovers and landscapers labouring to finish the grounds. Everything else is ready bang on schedule, which is remarkable given that only three weeks ago hard hats and wellies were required inside and out, and the spa was a cement cavern. The building faces the mountains in a graceful curve, a bit like the Unesco building in Paris.
For those who have been on site during the two-year construction phase, it has been a long time coming. Jill O'Hare, the marketing and sales executive, started in June 2006 in a Portakabin with Nasskau. Now they are up and running with a staff of about 250, 22 weddings booked and 75 per cent occupancy this weekend. (Now is the time to try it out, incidentally, as opening offers, which won't last long, start at €255 a room, or a weekend for two - including two nights' B&B, one Ramsay meal, one spa treatment and a round of golf - for €955.) O'Hare enticed a college friend, RóisíO'Connor, to leave Balthazar in Manhattan to run the hotel's "traditional Irish" pub, McGills. Recruits from other Ritz-Carlton hotels are given support for a week to open a bank account, find a house and buy a car. Sounds easy, doesn't it? Many have settled in Bray.
The publicity surrounding this hotel will no doubt focus on the black-mosaic, crystal-lit pool in the elaborate two-storey Espa spa, where the treatment beds alone are worth €4,500 each. Or the €8,000-a-night penthouse suite, which was booked last night for Caroline Downey's ball in aid of Childline. Or the Cedar Club gym, limited to 250 members. Or the two private spas for guests who vant to be alone, complete with separate lifts. Like the Four Seasons, the Ritz- Carlton is in business to serve the new rich, and it is a sign of the times that we have enough hedge-fundies to support this growing global network. If you suffer from status anxiety, this is possibly not for you.
But it's a classic upstairs-downstairs world. Upstairs is the marble foyer, the designer flowers, the curved hallways leading to luxurious rooms with walk-in wardrobes, divine beds and televisions improbably inserted in the bathroom mirrors. Downstairs, deep underground, are the vast kitchens, the stores, the laundries, the staff canteen, locker rooms and the windowless offices of the "core team" who run the show. It's a bunker.
On Sunday, the day before the opening, we return for the climax of the week's training, the "pep rally". Very American. Dermot O'Dwyer and Johnny Ronan of Treasury Holdings are there, as are members of the Slazenger family, who leased the land to them for this €200 million project.
For 15 minutes the staff - "ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen" - parade around the lobby, banging pots and pans, each department trying to outdo the other. Few are over 30. The spa team is the most flamboyant. The wedding planner, a man about 6ft 4in, comes dressed as a bride. They then clatter down the marble staircase to the ballroom, to get even more wired by some wild Irish dancing, a video featuring every employee and a rousing speech by the manager. The 67th Ritz-Carlton is hoist upon the world.