Gordon Ramsay is in the kitchen of Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in Chelsea, and it’s hot, intense and frenzied, wrote fly-on-the-wall reporter Nicci Gerard in the Observer on 24 January 1999.
‘Over everyone towers Ramsay, barking orders, spraying expletives across the room… tasting, shouting (“Fucking unbelievable!”), calming (“Guys, guys, guys!”).’ Ramsay, 32, the ‘wunderkind of the cooking world’, is running what is ‘not a democracy but a dictatorship’. Channel 4 was filming the kitchen for Ramsay’s Boiling Point, a five-part documentary.
It was a bad week: his father had just died, aged 54. His previous restaurant, Aubergine (fans included Madonna, David Bowie, Robert De Niro and Princess Margaret), was suing him for £1m for walking out. He’d done ‘everything by the book. It’s just sour grapes… High Court sour grapes.’
His temper preceded him, fuelled by the spectre of imperfection. He’d just spotted a chocolate smudge on a dessert plate. ‘It’s upsetting. Yes, I am upset. I don’t employ 14 staff to cook 30 lunches and then send out a dirty plate.’
Sunday Times restaurant critic AA Gill upset him, too, calling him a failed footballer (he had been scouted by Glasgow Rangers) and saying his clientele were ‘bloated plutocrats’. Criticise his food, fine, but no personal attacks, said Ramsay. When Gill turned up at Gordon Ramsay, Joan Collins in tow, Ramsay kicked him out.
His father didn’t rate the new career and Ramsay ‘never stopped wanting that patriarchal recognition and working for it’, Boiling Point, he hoped, would show his father he was a success, but his death put paid to that. ‘Dad never forgave me for not being a footballer.’
Ramsay, who had a daughter, wanted a son… ‘Whatever my son wants to do, it will be his choice and never mind, and I will always be there to pick up the pieces. Not like my father.’
