Ramsay’s sommelier bit colleague 5 times on arm as they made love
A WINE expert at Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant bit one of his colleagues during a ‘rough sex’ session, a court heard yesterday.
Arnaud Bardary, 32, one of the world’s leading sommeliers, admitted biting his victim’s arm repeatedly despite her telling him to stop.
Lawyers said he and former colleague Anais Lopes had consensual sex at his home.
But the French wine waiter ‘got carried away and crossed a line’, magistrates said, after a boozy leaving party from his job as head sommelier at Gordon Ramsay’s Maze restaurant in Mayfair.
Westminster magistrates’ court heard Miss Lopes, who also worked at the top- end restaurant, had flirted and flashed her breasts at him at his leaving party last month.
The pair then left the bar together and went to his home in Putney, south- west London, where they drank champagne before having sex.
Prosecutor Edward Aydin said: ‘She had been kissing him at the bar and once at his address they had consensual sex.
‘It lasted for about an hour and during that time, in the early hours of the morning, he began to bite the victim and the sex was quite rough. She asked him to stop because it was hurting her, but he continued to bite her. He bit her five times.
‘This amorous liaison ended up not as an amorous liaison but a rough and tumble, as if the victim went into a tumble dryer.’
Mr Aydin said the couple had continued to have sex, despite Miss Lopes’s complaint about the biting, and they then finished their champagne before she called a taxi and went home.
But she later reported him to police and Bardary was questioned and charged with common assault by beating. Mr Aydin said: ‘It was not romantic, it was rough sex, it was forceful.’
Bardary, who is from a family of winemakers in the Jura region of eastern France where he now lives, pleaded guilty to a single charge of common assault.
His lawyer Anne McCarthy said he had not intended to attack Miss Lopes.
She told magistrates: ‘At the leaving party, to put it colloquially, [the victim] came on very strong to him.
‘She was baring her breasts at him and using language that she would destroy him.
‘He’s in a state of shock about the allegations being made. Right at the beginning, he said there was never any intention of assault.’
Bardary had handed in his notice at Maze in March after working for television chef Ramsay for more than five years.
He had his leaving party at the City of Quebec pub in Marble Arch in May.
The Michelin Guide praises Maze as ‘a glamorous night out’, although the restaurant it lost its coveted Michelin one- star status last year.
Magistrates heard that Bardary was one of just 250 people worldwide who had qualified as a master sommelier, because of his wine expertise.
He has served customers including Johnny Depp and Prince Albert of Monaco and is due to start a new job in Sydney, Australia, next month.
Magistrate David Rogers fined Bardary £250 and ordered him to pay compensation of £150 to his victim. He must also pay £85 in legal costs, as well as a £30 victim surcharge.
Mr Rogers said Bardary would normally have been ordered to carry out community service, but magistrates decided to impose a fine instead because he is moving to Australia. Chairman of the bench Mr Rogers told Bardary: ‘It is an exceptional case but we accept that you have pleaded guilty and you have shown remorse and embarrassment. We feel that you got carried away and crossed a line that you shouldn’t have crossed but that was it.’
‘It was rough and not romantic’