Beef Wellington and the Mets Fan Experience
In which we travel to England, watch some speedway, have heart attacks watching the Mets, and learn the joy of food
The morning after the Mets lost 7-2 in a frustrating but shockingly characteristic opener to the London Series, I realized that I’d booked Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant on the wrong night.
Emily, my wife, had requested the excursion as part of the baseball-centric trip to England, and frankly, it made too much sense to ignore. So I went online several months in advance and reserved a “chef’s inspiration table,” which sounds sort of like a table where a down-on-his-luck chef would sit bemoaning his wasted life, and then suddenly get hit with a flash of inspiration and invent the French fry. I reserved the night before we flew home, paid the extortionate deposit, and got down to salivating.
What must have happened, I can only assume, went something like this. I selected my date; the restaurant was closed that day; the website said something to the effect of, “here are some similar times available the day after that”; I didn’t notice; I chose a time that would have worked perfectly the day before I was actually choosing; that was that.
There was no sugar-coating it; it was a gut punch. Emily deserved that dinner, because I think it’s safe to say that if she’d designed the trip, it would have looked slightly different. We left Kennedy Airport around midnight on Thursday, landing in London at 10:00 on Friday morning, and immediately caught a train to King’s Cross. There, we hopped on another train and journeyed North, bound for the town of Middlesbrough. Because it wouldn’t be a trip to England without a visit to Ryan.
I met Ryan 10 years ago, when we worked at the same summer camp. He was the ping pong counselor, except he called it “table tennis,” and would reprimand you if you didn’t. If campers showed up wearing flip flops, he sent them back to their cabins to change, but they had to be back before the pre-table-tennis warm-up stretches.
Ryan’s idiosyncrasies are innumerable, but a few are illustrative. In his Northern accent — which, of course, abounded around Middlesbrough in a jarring bit of auditory sensation — you generally don’t pronounce T or C sounds in the middle of words, so “water bottle” becomes “woh’uh bo’uhl.” He pronounces “hello” like “halloo,” and refers to people, regardless of their age and preferred name, by the word “young” — pronounced “yoong,” where the “oo” sounds the way it does in “book” — followed by their full first given name, and nothing more or less.
So, were he to run into Buck Showalter in the street, he’d stride forward, hand outstretched, and say, “halloo, yoong William.”
Ryan picked us up at the train station, and after dropping our bags at his house, we drove to our next stop: a speedway meeting of the British Development League, Middlesbrough Tigers vs. Belle Vue Colts. Ryan is the head of social media for Middlesbrough’s parent club, Redcar Bears, who race in British Speedway’s second division. Speedway — well basically, it’s motorcycles racing around a dirt track, except the bikes don’t have brakes, so the riders have to brake by dragging their feet, and the front tire seems to weirdly dissociate from the rest of the bike, so that the entire race consists more or less of hurtling for dear life around the tightest of turns while hoping that no one hurtles into you.
It was fun. Middlesbrough won. And my bright blue and orange Mets jacket must have revealed me as American, since two boys in attendance, roughly 11 years old, spent about 40 delightful minutes going through American fast food chains and asking if I’d tried them, then googling words that Americans and Brits say differently and asking how I said them. If nothing else, they taught me about “trackie bottoms” (“trah’ie bo’uhms”), which translates to “tracksuit bottoms,” or basically sweatpants.
Then home we went, where it was time, after about an hour of sleep in two days, to go to bed. The next morning, we caught a return train to London. Ryan led us to our hotel, and then to London Stadium, where we watched the Mets lose in superbly uninspiring fashion. We went back to our hotel, the three of us crammed into a room smaller than a pitcher’s mound, and soon had a letter slipped under our door warning us that having three people in a two-person room was a violation of policy and the manager had been informed, and would make a further decision in the morning.
By the next day, thankfully, Dwight Schrute was no longer on duty, and the manager told us that as Ryan was already leaving that afternoon, there had been no harm done. But the trip had already been a whirlwind, in far from the best way. And now I’d booked Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant on the wrong night.
The people sitting in front of us for Game 2 at London Stadium were Phillies fans, in the worst way possible. They went through about sixteen beers each, including coming back with a four-pack each (?) in the ninth inning (??). The man, who was wearing a Chase Utley jersey, forgot to sit down at one point, standing and looking down aimlessly as the game went on, which, in fairness, seems exactly like something Chase Utley would do. The woman with him was invested — maybe overly, depending on your outlook on life — in getting “the wave” to move the right direction.
Just to unpack that a bit more: some Phillies fans one section over were working on their very important project of starting the wave, but it kept fizzling out, because none of the rest of the stadium was very interested. The woman sitting in front of us, though, thought it might work out if they would only send the wave the other direction, towards us. I know she thought so, because she yelled it, many times. At one point, she left her seat and barged over to the next section to demand that they give her a chance and send the wave our way.
Did they end up doing it? I don’t really remember. Those fans a section over sure were persistent, though, if a bit unfocused — several times they attempted to lead the crowd, or at least a dozen people or so, in a song that I don’t think anyone knew, possibly including themselves. At key points, though, they buckled down to bellow out what must be the signature chant of Phillies baseball:
“E! A! G! L! E! S!”
(I’m not kidding).
I think everyone remembers the basic outline of Game 2. Phillies go ahead early; Mets tie it in the sixth. Phillies go back ahead on a David Dahl pinch-hit homer in the seventh, because of course they do; I guess Dedniel Núñez can only keep things together for so long. Mets go down easy in the eighth, but in the ninth, against José Alvarado, they’ve got things working when Tyrone Taylor walks to lead off the inning and Jeff McNeil singles him to third.
Mark Vientos chops one to third base, and the Mets finally get the break that the Phillies have been getting all day as Alec Bohm can’t handle it and Taylor scores to tie the game. After Luis Torrens walks and Francisco Lindor strikes out, Alvarado hits Pete Alonso with a pitch to bring in the go-ahead run. Facing Brandon Nimmo, a ball gets away from J.T. Realmuto, and an insurance run comes in.
The Phillies fans who fill the building, ecstatic all day, have gone silent. But soon, they’ll wake up again. The Mets bullpen will do that to you. Reed Garrett, already 1 1/3 innings into his outing, stays in to start the ninth. Cristian Pache promptly singles to center, and after Kyle Schwarber pops out, Garrett hits Realmuto with a pitch. In comes Drew Smith, who allows a single to Bryce Harper then issues Bohm an RBI walk. Up comes Nick Castellanos.
And then Luis Torrens becomes a Mets legend.
At first, a squibber out in front of the plate looks like it might not turn into even one out. But Torrens is on it instantly. Grabs it. Wheels and stomps on home plate. Wheels again and fires to first. Garrett Stubbs slides into him as he throws, and he’s down in pain for a second afterwards, but no matter; it’s a double play.
Ballgame.
I can feel my bright orange and blue Mets jacket soaking in the hate and resentment of 50,000 Phillies fans, and it’s as if the sun has finally come out from behind the lingering clouds. Soak it up, soak it in. We’re standing and staring around, surveying the whole wacky landscape, and I can’t keep a giant smile off my face. Walking out, passing all the parody-level concession stands — my favorite: “American street food,” but also in the running, a “New York Pastrami Sandwich” that they would never let across the Atlantic — and a trip that hadn’t been going all that well is suddenly one of the greatest nights I’ve ever had.
And then we remember that wait a minute, didn’t we pass a Gordon Ramsay restaurant literally down the block from the stadium just last night? Why, yes we did. Just opened this week, we should definitely stop by. Table for two? Certainly, we can do that. So in we pop and down we sit and Oh My God, does that man know his way around a Beef Wellington.
Gordon Ramsay’s Bread Street Kitchen doesn’t have a branch in the U.S. yet, which I think is a little strange, because it’s so good that it would instantly close every other restaurant. Gordon Ramsay could become the first true monopolist since Rockefeller, and he would deserve every penny.
That night, we went with a Scotch Egg to start, which couldn’t have been better, then the Beef Wellington, which…I don’t even know how to get this across: it was the best. It was food at its peak. It was a Jacob deGrom glove-side fastball on the corner, Brandon Nimmo taking a 3-2 pitch for a walk, Javier Báez putting down a tag. Gordon Ramsay’s Beef Wellington is Tom Seaver’s motion, Ted Williams’ swing, Jackie Robinson sliding home.
And then, somehow, the sticky toffee pudding for dessert is better! This incredible caramel-type sauce, perfect in taste and texture and viscosity and every other way…it’s almost inexplicably good. I haven’t the slightest idea how he does it, and I know I certainly couldn’t, but Gordon Ramsay is doing something that isn’t often done. The pure passion going into this — because how could anyone create any of these dishes without the expertise and knowledge that comes from a life spent honing a passion? — is hard to even imagine.
He’s literally creating joy. He’s combining some beef and finely chopped mushrooms and puff pastry and creating mind-blowing happiness. That ability — to turn everyday things into joyous activities, reaching millions of people and giving them an experience they never even knew was possible — is a gift, of course, and it’s also an enormous responsibility. If you don’t put in the work, don’t prepare and execute well, don’t leave every last ounce you have out on the field — you’re letting yourself down, and everybody who believes in you. But Gordon Ramsay reaches that bar, then exceeds it.
It was so good that we came back the next night for one last meal before we flew home. They were sold out of the Scotch Egg — no surprise — so the waitress recommended the salt and pepper squid, which was outstanding. I went with the steak and ale pie, and after the first bite, closed my eyes and lowered my head, contemplating how it was possible for food to taste that good.
We ordered the Sticky Toffee Pudding again for dessert, but this time I wanted to try the brownie as well, because this place has no U.S. location, and I’m going to miss it. When I took my first bite of the brownie, I think I actually said, out loud, “Jesus Christ.” Perfectly warm with slowly-melting salted caramel ice cream on top — it was wonderfully melty and moist, in the way you usually find when you deliberately undercook brownies, but it also held its shape perfectly when cut. So it wasn’t undercooked to achieve a result — somehow, when Gordon Ramsay does brownies, they just end up like that.
We finished our meal and paid, and walked home in utter satisfaction. The next day, we flew home, and the whole way I thought about Gordon Ramsay. And Luis Torrens. My God, does that man know his way around a double play.
