For some, travel is the sights. For longtime Pittsburgh cooking teacher Jane Citron, it's the food. A recent trip to London and Dubai took her into the galaxy of three international star chefs.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Though we missed him in London, we caught up with Gordon Ramsay in Dubai.

Chef Gordon Ramsay

With eight restaurants in London and one in Dubai, several cookbooks and frequently televised food shows, the most recent being the much-talked-about "Hell's Kitchen," Ramsay is a United Kingdom icon. This is a man on the move. This summer he will open a restaurant in Tokyo, and next year he plans one in midtown Manhattan.

When we met, it was midmorning and Ramsay was running late. He had arrived from London only a few hours before, so I anticipated an irritable, sleep-deprived Ramsay faced with a full schedule and a reputation for being blunt. But across from me sat a handsome, energetic man enjoying a cup of tea as he talked about his restaurant empire.

"Running restaurants involves more than cooking," he said. "It's big business and not built on a deck of cards. We run a $2¹/₂ million-dollar cost at core center. In London a central reservation office handles 700 to 800 calls a day."

Ramsay admitted he works best under pressure. Scottish by birth, he played professional soccer for three years and, at 38, is physically fit with energy and a passion for his work. Weekends, when his restaurant, Gordon Ramsay/68 Royal Hospital Road is closed, he spends time with his wife and four small children.

He talked about his restaurant in Chelsea with pride. If you are looking for Ramsay at work, the kitchen of 68 Royal Hospital Road is where you are most likely to find him.

"That's my baby," he said. The 40-seat gem, London's only three-star Michelin restaurant, delivers a level of perfection without being stuffy.

Ramsay talks about refining and remaking a dish until he is completely satisfied. Sometimes this will take days. His style of cooking embodies rich flavors while remaining light and healthful. He invokes beautiful but simple presentation, perfectly proportioned servings artistically garnished, using the best ingredients to make food taste delicious. He eschews the trend of the moment.

We have eaten in four of Gordon Ramsay's restaurants, and the consistency is remarkable. When a plate is served, it is easy to identify Ramsay's style.

Each restaurant has an executive chef -- a young man or woman who has made a five- or six-year commitment to Ramsay. He described this relationship "almost like an apprenticeship resulting in mini-Gordon Ramsays."

"It is important not to stifle a young chef's creativity and for both of us to be straightforward and honest with each other. Such determination requires stamina and patience on both parts."

Ramsay is excited about the challenge of opening in the United States and bringing the best of the British to a city he considers the restaurant capital of the world. "It's hard for me to go any higher, but at 38 I haven't peaked yet." Known for his salty language, Ramsay says, "I can't afford to [mess] up." We doubt that he will.

Jamie Oliver

A lot can happen in two years, especially if you are British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. We met in November 2003 in New York. Now we were in London -- Hoxton to be exact -- in his production kitchen. Jamie, his hair a mop of cowlicks, in blue jeans and sweatshirt, looked much younger than his 30 years. And everyone still calls him Jamie.

	Jane Citron Chef Jamie Oliver Click photo for larger image.

In 2000 Oliver opened Fifteen, a nonprofit restaurant staffed by 15 cooks drawn from a pool of high school dropouts and unemployed street kids. The 15 who made the cut had to survive a grueling crash course in cooking orchestrated by Oliver to prepare them for a career in the restaurant industry.

How was Fifteen doing? "Things are going well," Oliver answered. "The first year there were eight graduates, the second, 21, and the third year is in the home stretch with year No. 4 coming up."

The foundation is doing well, and Oliver is fully committed. In December he started a Fifteen in Amsterdam with 18 students.

He continues to write cookbooks and star in cooking shows. This summer he is working on his sixth book, with plans to explore Italy with a small crew and van, stopping at random in villages, towns and markets -- "going for the unusual," he said.

For Oliver this is a way to refresh and revitalize himself and "maybe get into a bit of mischief."

In 2004 he turned his attention to school meals in an effort to prove that providing decent meals on a budget was not impossible. "It is not only about obesity," he said. "What we have today are children with a diet so unhealthy they're likely to die before their parents."

What started as a charitable interest soon became a passion. Oliver persuaded a school district in a deprived part of London to let him overhaul the school menus and teach food preparers how to make fresh food and at the same time introduce new tastes and relatively unknown dishes to the students. Oliver worked as a dinner lady and frequently had to resort to creative measures to eliminate resistance to wholesome food. The fact is, the kids were reasonably content with the old regime.

Before Oliver, school lunches offered burgers and chips, fish fingers and chips, frozen pizzas and chips, sausage rolls and chips. Slowly he succeeded in getting kids to try and even like the new foods. After a few go-rounds, herb-crusted fillet of fish, homemade scone-based pizza and butternut squash and bean chili tasted pretty good.

The battle is far from over. There remains the question of money. In April he met with Prime Minster Tony Blair and presented a petition with 271,000 signatures supporting his cause. Shortly thereafter, Blair announced the allotment of a large sum of money to improve school meals.

An hour of discussion had passed, and Jamie looked at my husband, Carl, and said, "Time for some lunch? Game for simple but lovely mushroom pasta?"

In less than 12 minutes, he whipped up a pasta dish and salad from scratch. We sat at the counter as he sliced the mushrooms -- gorgeous blewitt (plump English mushrooms with a pale blue base), pied-de-mouton, cepes and girolle. He heated a large wok, added a scant tablespoon of olive oil followed by the sliced mushrooms, flipped the pan and added fresh thyme and garlic. Seasoning liberally with Malden English Sea Salt and fresh ground pepper, he tossed in a knob of butter and sauteed the mushrooms a few minutes longer before turning his attention to the pasta (the English pronounce it paa-stah, or at least Jamie did.)

Then he poured a mound of flour on the counter and added 2 egg yolks. "Normally I use the whole egg [100 grams flour to 1 whole egg], but I want to make the pasta richer to spoil your husband." He mixed, then kneaded the dough with alacrity.

"What kind of pasta would you like, Carl -- papparadelle, tagliatelle or cappelini?" After serious thought, my husband replied, "The medium noodle." Tagliatelle it would be. Though the public views him as a celebrity chef, Oliver sees himself as a cook

Using a large hand-operated pasta machine, Oliver quickly dispatched a mass of noodles onto the counter, separating them with a sprinkling of flour, and dropped them into the pot of boiling salted water. The noodles cooked in less than 3 minutes, long enough to make a salad he said "represents everything I love about cooking -- fresh, colorful, seasonal food, simplicity at its best."

Oliver arranged thin slices of prosciutto (our salty component) on plates, followed by spoonfuls of buffalo mozzarella (cold and creamy for texture and contrast). For sweet, a few Clementine orange slices with a sprinkling of fresh basil, a touch of arugula for crunch and peppery spice finished with a generous splash of good olive oil and drizzle of balsamic vinegar. "The ingredients will do all the work producing a flavor explosion."

Jamie did not drain the noodles but transferred them directly from the colander to the frying pan, allowing a small amount of cooking water to go into the pan. He added another knob of butter, freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, and gave a quick toss of the pasta and mushrooms to "cream it." One more taste and fine-tuning of seasoning and from Jamie Oliver, "Bon Appetit, mate."

Heston Blumenthal

Bray, England

At 38, Heston Blumenthal, chef-owner of The Fat Duck, has had a culinary career entwined with the science of cooking. In 1995 he opened the Fat Duck, and in 2004 the restaurant earned a coveted third star from the Michelin Guide.

Chef Heston Blumenthal

Recently, Restaurant, an international magazine of the trade, named The Fat Duck best restaurant in the world for 2005. The newest "must-go" restaurant is in the small village of Bray, 40 minutes from London. We made a reservation for lunch.

We arrived at noon and were seated in the small, unfussy but well-appointed dining room, studying the menu as we sipped our aperitif.

The starters were unusual:Liquid Nitrogen Poached Green Tea and Lime Mousse and Pommery Mustard Ice Cream paired with Red Cabbage Gazpacho and Truffle and Oak Toast. Main dishes were easier to comprehend: Truffled Salmon Poached with Liquorice, Poached Breast of Anjou Pigeon and Roast Foie Gras sounded delectable. There was also Snail Porridge and Sardine on Toast Sorbet. We took the suggestion of the maitre d' and chose the tasting menu.

A succession of imaginative small plates was paired with matching wines. Among the six starters were a palate cleanser -- the renowned Liquid Nitrogen. A waiter arrived with a tank of liquid nitrogen and plunged the bite-size pieces of mousse into the tank to freeze them. I wasn't sure whether to duck under the table or raise my fork. We were told to pop the cold and smoking edible into our mouths -- one bite, please. The sensation was intriguing, using temperature and flavor to create a delicious and refreshing taste. It was pure theater, but what fun.

We had five main courses -- tasting portions -- and several unusual desserts, including Mango and Douglas Fir Puree and a rather weird Parsnip Cereals with Parsnip Milk and the much publicized Smoked Bacon and Egg Ice Cream.

Lunch lasted more than two hours. Each course was original in concept and execution and beautifully plated; most were superb. It was fun to discuss and critique each course and to interact with the friendly staff.

We met Heston Blumenthal both before and after lunch. He is nice-looking, serious and soft-spoken. Determined to become a chef, he schooled himself in classical French cooking embellished with trips to France with the single-minded purpose of amassing knowledge and skills to open a restaurant.

A turning point occurred when he read Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking," a science book that questioned fundamental teachings in the kitchen. By the time he and his wife, Susanna, saved enough money and found the right property, Blumenthal was immersed in molecular gastronomy, where each ingredient had its unique composition and reaction to elements.

Blumenthal uses scientific methods to deconstruct taste and flavors to invent new possibilities. At the Fat Duck he creates palate-challenging combinations and explores what happens to food in the kitchen and in his laboratory and examines these findings in relation to the diner.

Never had we experienced a meal with so many new taste dimensions. The only dish I did not like was White Chocolate and Caviar. Blumenthal explained the fusion of the crisp, hard white chocolate and the salt in the caviar, and I don't doubt this made scientific sense, but I didn't get it. Perhaps it is my love for unadulterated caviar and distaste for white chocolate.

Blumenthal cooks with passion, and, though thoroughly entrenched in scientific technology, his food is what I would expect from three-star dining. In his words, "After all, though science may be the reason behind it all, the food still has to taste delicious."