burger or a stunning pasta dish, or even poaching fi sh… In Vietnam - they don’t have fridges there, they don’t even cook with dairy. They buy produce twice a day on a daily
basis whether you’re operating a computer or… there was a telephonist I came across who was operating this call centre for an airline, and she would buy fi sh twice a day. She has no refrigeration unit at home, she
doesn’t even know what dairy is – cream, butter, eggs. And she’s off to the market, buying her fi sh, cutting it up, keeping it whole, she’s steaming it, wrapping it in bamboo. Twenty-one years of age and she eats
like a king. And yet, she earns, on average, fi ve dollars a day. You can’t compare that, because she grew up with that important factor that one has to eat properly – not just to work in this industry, you’ve got to eat properly.
You’re sitting here talking without swearing like a normal person. Is it all in the act?
GR: It’s not an act. You know, I’ve got four children, my wife’s a schoolteacher. If I had to put a microphone on a football player or a basketball player ringside, courtside – when you’re passionate about something in such a big way, you let it go. We’ve fi lmed Kitchen Nightmares and
Hell’s Kitchen and it’s under the extraordinary pressure because I’m so pissed – the fact that they’re spending hours of wasting customers’ time, their own time and charging a fortune for dishes and they’re not even putting their love and soul into it. So I expose them in a big way. Hell’s
Kitchen will have an amazing array of executive chefs that want to be the very best, but there’s a hundred hours of footage that gets condensed to 42 minutes, so of course it’s going to look pissy. b
Gordon Ramsay at A Glance
• Born in Renfrewshire Scotland and grows up in England
• Knee injury destroys his burgeoning football career
• At 19, studies Hotel Management and pays serious attention to culinary education
• Begins cooking career in early 1980s and moves to London
• Wins numerous cooking awards for his restaurants
• Kitchen Nightmares premieres on TV in 2004
• Has been awarded 13 Michelin stars in total and currently holds 12
The role of a chef today is far more prolific
than it ever
was 20 years ago... there has to be a certain image in