“He’s like a hurricane,” said the public relations rep for Gordon Ramsay, the latest and perhaps biggest draw in Marina Bay Sands’ stable of celebrity chefs. She couldn’t have put it more succinctly. We’re in a quiet corner of Ramsay’s light-filled Singapore outpost of Bread Street Kitchen, which opened its doors to an expectant public last week, patiently waiting for Ramsay, and, in what seems like a flash, he’s seated in front of us. We don’t see him coming. He’s just there.

In the flesh, Ramsay is a pared-down version of his TV self. He is leaner, his voice gentler. He speaks in that trademark quick-fire staccato, with short-burst sentences and lots of slapping the back of one hand against the opposite palm.

“This isn’t about setting myself apart from everybody else,” he said when asked what Bread Street Kitchen will do to stand out in Singapore’s hyper-competitive restaurant scene. “It’s about being part of the foodie empire that’s being built in Singapore, but coming up with something different. That was the most important thing for me. Plus, chefs are temperamental beasts, so when we see other chefs being successful in other cities, we want to go there!”

Like the other Bread Street Kitchen restaurants in London and Hong Kong, the Singapore outpost serves what Ramsay describes as “traditionally-British fare” with an Asian twist. “The hallmark and the heartbeat of the menu is definitely British, but we’ve localised some of it in terms of the spices and seasonings,” he said.

Indeed, while there are fried chicken wings spiced with tamarind, spring onions and coriander (S$18), and tuna tartare hit with chilli, garlic and sesame (S$19), it is the steadfastly British standards that are the strengths of the menu. To wit: You’d be hard-pressed to find a better version of fish and chips (S$26) anywhere else on the island. Here, the fish is swathed in a crisp beer batter and served with crushed sweet peas and tartar sauce. The potted salt beef brisket (S$19), spiked with the heat of grain mustard and served with piccalilli (the British answer to achar), is also noteworthy for its robust yet balanced flavours.

In fact, the menu is similar to what fans of Ramsay’s TV show Kitchen Nightmares are already familiar with: Simple dishes done well, using top-notch local produce wherever possible — a formula Ramsay has used time and again in his attempt to save the ailing restaurants on said show.

Ironically, the few dishes that are perhaps meant to imbue the menu with a sense of place are its very weaknesses. Take those tamarind chicken wings, battered and fried to a crisp and cloaked in a sweet-sour sauce akin to a barbeque glaze. They aren’t bad, but other fried chicken joints across the island do far better (and cheaper) renditions of spicy fried chicken. Similarly, the diced tuna tartare folded in what tasted like sriracha may be novel to the Western palate, but the increasingly jaded Singaporean palates at our table were hardly impressed.

When asked what he would recommend to the first-time diner at Bread Street Kitchen, Ramsay looked out the glass walls of his restaurant and said: “I think food is about mood, about the setting. So if I came here for lunch, I’d want something compelling, especially sitting here with this view.”

He gestured to the waters and panorama of the Fullerton stretch beyond. “I’d say the fish and chips. For dinner here, I would start off with the sea bass fillet carpaccio (S$21) and then have the Irish Angus rib-eye (S$68), beautifully grilled and finished with a red-wine shallot butter.”

Ramsay admitted that adapting his food to the Singaporean style of eating had been a challenge for his kitchen. Here, it’s helmed by 27-year-old executive chef Sabrina Stillhart. “(Food in Singapore) is de-formalised in a very relaxed way, so you don’t have a structure of starter, main course, dessert. When it’s cooked, you send it out and nobody gets offended. It’s a very natural way of cooking because we don’t hold anything.

“In the United Kingdom, it’s like, table four is clearing in four minutes, so (the servers) clear away the plates and we start firing (the next course). It’s a really hard thing for a European-trained chef to get their head around. So we’re adapting that and it’s hard to change everyone’s head.”

That hasn’t stopped Ramsay and his team from making yet more plans for this sprawling two-storey restaurant, including a weekend brunch that they hope to introduce in September.

“I’d like to set up something here for all the cyclists,” he said, pointing to the outdoor area facing The Fullerton. “As my life got crazier three years ago, I turned to triathlons to claw back more time, get me more discipline and time for myself. There were so many people cycling here (over the weekends), it was incredible. So we’re looking at a really nice pit stop for brunch on Saturday and Sunday, where cyclists can pick up 600 to 700 calories, eat and go,” he enthused.

Taking more time for himself doesn’t mean his empire of global restaurants stops growing. Ramsay has plans to open his second restaurant in Hong Kong in October, another Bread Street Kitchen in Dubai at the end of this year, and yet another in Macau next year. With that kind of workload and the fact that he quite literally gets mobbed wherever he goes, it’s no wonder Ramsay seems to have perfected the art of appearing and disappearing in a flash — which is exactly what he did as soon as our interview was over.

Bread Street Kitchen is at L1-81, The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands. Tel: 6688 5665. Opening hours: Sundays to Wednesdays 11.30am to 1am;Thursdays to Saturdays 11.30am to 2am