British chef and TV host Gordon Ramsay has toted three Michelin stars at his flagship restaurant for 23 years. Alex French unearths his secrets.
he was already among the most successful restaurateurs in the world. At 40, he controlled a seven-site empire that included. His eponymous establishment in Chelsea, then just a few years old, had developed a reputation as one of the best anywhere.
That’s when I started to understand, without sounding cocky, “I can do this, it’s something I can handle.” The pressure was extraordinary—and it was a double-edged sword for me, because the pressure was in French! But I got up to speed with how severe the pressure was, and that’s how I got promoted early in my career, because I could handle that pressure in one of the best kitchens in the world. My first real mentor was Marco Pierre White.
Ramsay is set to open a five-restaurant dining experience and cooking academy in London next year. “The knives are out,” he says.When you first came on the scene in the U.S., there was some mystification over your persona—you were brash and demanding, had something of a potty mouth, to say the least. It always felt to me that you weren’t a mean guy, it’s more that you’re driven and have high expectations.
It’s a fascinating roller coaster of emotions, but I want it to work. I want them to succeed! I don’t care how successful you think you are because you’re a great Italian chef—it needs to come down to the bottom line. I got to the very top of my field before any TV, and so every level of insight, everything I attempted to re-create for their businesses, was from my own experience at the top. If I leave you the prescription and you don’t take that medicine, you are not going to get fixed.
Yes, it is—and I’ll swear by it. The model was set up to be perfect: 10 tables, five-days-a-week operation. We’re not rolling in the cash to please the banks and the shareholders. It’s a model that was conceptualized on what I discovered and then went out and studied. You mentioned being unselfish and learning to delegate. How, as a person who craves control, do you learn to let go? grow. And when I say to drop them in the deep end, you’ve also got to have the floaties on standby for when the shit hits the fan. You have to let them fall, but you need to be there not only to pick them up and to dust them down but to keep that confidence at an all-time high. Delegation is all about understanding the point of the mistake.
We are fine-tuned, and as an individual I’m equally fine-tuned. I did my three-hour cycle this morning from 6 a.m. until 9 a.m., and then I went and sat in the sauna, and then I did cryo-chamber therapy for three minutes, and then I came back fit as a fiddle. Everyone thinks that level of training is hard and damning for me, but it’s a release and an incredible way of reviewing and processing everything you’re doing. So, no, there’s no potluck with perfection.
Despite achieving global fame as a TV host, Ramsay had reached the top of the culinary world before ever stepping foot in front of a camera.We had to fight off stiff competition to conceptualize what we were doing—there were big hitters chasing those sites. The first time walking through that building was just breathtaking. I could see as far as Oxford. There were helicopters below us, the Gherkin was below us, and I saw an opportunity like no tomorrow.
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