Gordon Ramsay (14 page)

And, while the two men had struck up such an amazing rapport, it looked as if they would remain worlds apart when the show was over. Gordon invited Ed and his partner Martine to his London restaurant for a celebratory meal. But the couple stayed in the North-East. Ed, who left his old burger business and found a new job working full-time in the kitchens of Gateshead Council, was spending most of his time clearing tables and washing dishes. He harbours no ambitions for a career in show business or in a fancier kitchen. ‘Gordon proves that to be a top chef you have to want it one hundred per cent, one hundred per cent of the time, and I don’t. The show hasn’t changed me
at all. I think I am more appreciative of good food now and I know the effort and the science that goes into making an expensive meal. But I’m happy with my life and, while it is great that people still want to stop and talk about the show, I never wanted to be famous.’

Gordon, however, was fast becoming more famous by the year. And he was finding out that fame and fortune can both come at a price. What happened to his £152,000 Ferrari was a case in point. Within weeks of getting the car’s keys, Gordon and his old friend Marcus Wareing had left Gordon Ramsay at the end of dinner service and headed down the Fulham Road for a 2am breakfast. While he was reversing into a parking space in front of the Vingt-Quatre restaurant, a woman in the queue outside stepped into Gordon’s path. ‘She slapped the back of my car for no apparent reason,’ Gordon later told Marylebone Magistrates’ Court, where the matter was finally resolved in his favour. ‘I moved forward because she was shouting and banging her hands on the boot. I did not understand what was going on. I wanted to get out of the car but it was difficult because she would not let me out. I had to wind down the window and she was shouting: “Did you not see me? I was in the road.” While the window was open, she was screaming at me in a high-pitched voice. She was saying that I was arrogant and boisterous. She said, “I don’t like your arrogance, you arrogant chef.” And she said, “What would you do if I scratched your car?”’

They were both shortly to find out. Gordon and Marcus headed into the restaurant for scrambled eggs on toast while trying to keep an eye on the lady from the street. ‘When I went to pay the bill, I saw quite clearly
through the window that she was leaning, slumped over the back of my car.’ She had then come into the restaurant, tapped Gordon on the shoulder and laughingly apologised for scratching it. By this point, the police had been called, however, and in court the lady was finally told to explain herself and apologise. ‘I just wanted to wind him up, play a trick, it was silly,’ she admitted, before being found guilty of causing £1,500 of damage and fined £150 with £125 costs.

For his part, Gordon said the whole affair was made worse by the way his public persona had been dragged into court and potentially used against him. ‘You have a reputation for losing your temper, don’t you?’ the defending counsel asked him at one point, presumably to suggest that Gordon had in some way goaded his attacker into action. And this was not the end of the Ferrari affair.

Less than three months later, Gordon and Tana, then pregnant with the couple’s fourth child, were heading back into London in the car after a rare weekend break in Wales. At a roundabout in Hammersmith, west London, the driver of a Subaru decided to race them. He overtook the Ferrari before ploughing into the back of it and sending the Ramsays spinning into the central reservation. ‘My whole life flashed before my eyes and I immediately thought of Tana,’ said Gordon who immediately took his wife to the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for a check-up. Tana and the couple’s baby were fine, but what had turned out to be too high profile a car had been written off for good.

Away from the road, Gordon’s amazing rise from a Glasgow housing estate to the very top of the culinary
establishment looked set to pass a new milestone. There were rumours that the aggressive bad boy of British restaurants was to take over the kitchen at the oh-so-refined Claridge’s in Mayfair. John Williams, the previous Maitre Chef des Cuisines there, was being moved sideways to look after the five-star hotel’s other food offerings – and the owners wanted a new start for their flagship restaurant. But would they pick someone like Gordon? He would be ‘a colourful choice for such a respectable hotel’, one anonymous source told the
Evening Standard
when rumours about his possible appointment first surfaced.

But others said that over the years Claridge’s had actually been proved a little more flexible to changing times than might have been expected. In 1945, for example, Winston Churchill had approved a plan to put a spadeful of Yugoslav soil under one of the beds in Suite 212 so that the room could be officially decreed Yugoslav territory when the exiled king’s son was born there. Meanwhile, everyone from Margaret Thatcher and Nancy Reagan to Donatella Versace and the Beckhams held parties and booked rooms in the hotel. Perhaps Gordon Ramsay, in this company, might not raise as many eyebrows as expected.

And in the end Gordon did beat his rivals and win what had turned out to be the highest-profile and most hotly contested job in London’s restaurant world. What was more of a surprise was the fact that he was allowed to put his name above the door. Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s opened in October 2001 after £2 million had been spent taking the restaurant’s capacity down from 120 to just 65 and turning the room into a shrine to classic art deco style. Etched mirrors, elegant 1930s wall lights, woven-silk
chandeliers and apricot-coloured silk wall coverings set the tone. Gordon’s signature aubergine-coloured leather chairs stood around the circular tables and every piece of cutlery, china and glassware was chosen by Gordon himself.

Having timed the drive from his Chelsea restaurant to Claridge’s at just seven and a half minutes, Gordon was ready to defy all his critics and control both kitchens simultaneously. ‘Everyone is expecting me to fall, everyone is saying, “Oh, he’s spreading himself too thin and Claridge’s is going to be the death of him.” But bollocks. The only people saying that are the jealous bastards who didn’t work hard enough to be offered this kind of position in the first place,’ he said, anger, spirit and confidence showing through in equal measure.

And Gordon did have some strong supporters. Claridge’s general manager, Chris Cowdray, said he knew early on that the company had found the right man for his hotel’s new venture. ‘I get a buzz out of dealing with Gordon as he is so passionate about restaurants – and about this one in particular,’ he said.

And in return a fired-up Gordon was entirely shameless about promoting it. ‘A monster has arrived in London’s posh Mayfair. It wasn’t there two weeks ago, but it has roared in on a whirlwind of culinary interest and curiosity,’ proclaimed the
Daily Mail
just after the big opening. But this was hardly independent comment: Gordon had written the article himself. ‘Yes, it’s my Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s restaurant,’ he continued, coming clean in a feature of nearly 2,000 words. ‘It is generating a hurricane of activity. Yesterday we received more than 500 telephone calls for reservations. And 300 faxes. The response has been
phenomenal and, in only the second week, we have welcomed 1,500 clients. The breathing, sweaty monster lives in the telephone. Booking is open from 8am to 10pm – and there are four telephonists trying to secure the breach every time a fresh wave crashes through.’

A more naked promotional activity would be hard to imagine. But Gordon was determined to keep the tills ringing and ensure the money men behind Claridge’s didn’t ever regret putting their faith in him. And, fortunately, when it came to big money deals Gordon was fast gaining form.

A couple of months earlier, three City workers had come for dinner at his Petrus restaurant one Tuesday and spent an amazing £8,000 on Champagne. And that turned out to be just the beginning of an extraordinary week for the Ramsay finances. Two days later, six other quite unconnected City workers arrived at Petrus for dinner just before 9pm – and they didn’t leave until they had spent a record-breaking £44,007.

Gordon says that when the men first arrived there was no sign of the spending that was to come. They had come from the City by taxi and two of them each ordered an ordinary £3.50 Kronenbourg beer while the others stuck with mineral water at the bar while they waited for their table to be cleared. Only when the group had finally taken their seats did the real drinking and spending begin. The first three bottles of wine they ordered were a Chateau Petrus Claret 1945, which cost a staggering £11,600, a 1946, which was a bargain in comparison at £9,400, and a 1947, which added another £12,300 to their bill. After their three-course a la carte meal and a few lesser bottles
of wine, they decided they should have some dessert wine – and picked a 1900 Chateau d’Yquem at £9,200.

‘They cleaned us out of our very best bottles – and they didn’t bat an eyelid when they got the bill,’ said Gordon, who had decided to knock the £400 the businessmen had spent on food off the total. ‘They seemed to have enjoyed themselves tremendously and our wine waiter was absolutely ecstatic. For him it was just like winning an Oscar. It was an unprecedented evening.’ As, indeed, was the four-figure tip the men left to be shared between the equally ecstatic waiting staff.

Back at Claridge’s, things were not always going so smoothly, however. One afternoon, Gordon was striding through the hotel lobby towards the restaurant when an immaculately dressed older lady stood up and accosted him.

‘Young man, I have waited to see you,’ she began. ‘Do you realise that I have been coming here for 42 years for lunch and now I am told that there isn’t a table for me?’

‘I’m sorry to hear this. Did you try to book?’ Gordon asked nervously.

‘I have never had to book before and I don’t intend to do so now. What is more, I think it is appalling that the restaurant is so full. What happened to the days when one might take a quiet lunch with a friend without all this palaver?’

What indeed? For the Ramsay palaver wasn’t just centred on Claridge’s. In an emotional homecoming, Gordon was opening an equally sought-after new 70-seater restaurant in his old city of Glasgow. Amaryllis was to be his first venture outside London and ended a two-year quest to find a suitable Scottish site. It also helped
him bury some demons. Since walking out of Jock Wallace’s office nearly 15 years earlier, he had seen Glasgow as the scene of his biggest professional failure. So it meant a huge amount to him that he could finally come back there in triumph.

Amaryllis was opened as part of a massive refit of the super-stylish One Devonshire Gardens Hotel – in a city Gordon could hardly recognise from his childhood or his footballing days. Stylish shopping arcades, designer stores, boutique hotels – what had been 1990’s European City of Culture had since discovered a new financial and social heart. There was big money there again and a Ramsay restaurant was just the kind of place people wanted to spend it. But were the locals really ready for menus promising ‘veloute of haricots blancs with roasted ceps and grated truffle’, ‘tortellini of lobster and langoustines with fennel puree and baby spinach’, ‘cannon of new season spring lamb with caramelised shallots, caviar aubergine and basil and rosemary jus’? It seemed, right from the start, that they were.

The restaurant was praised as offering ‘food of a standard as yet unavailable anywhere else in Scotland’, according to
The Scotsman
’s food critic, Gillian Glover, who was one of the first people to try it. Other experts agreed, diners poured through the doors and within a year Amaryllis had been awarded its first Michelin star – one of the very few ever given north of the border. But, as with any Gordon Ramsay venture, there was controversy as well.

First of all, he had to deal with the pickets from Clydesdale Animal Action and Advocates for Animals who were demonstrating outside One Devonshire Gardens and
demanding that foie gras be taken off the menu at Amaryllis. Gordon refused, claiming with difficulty that the geese were not being force-fed or ill-treated by his fair-play supplier. Next under the spotlight came the new restaurant’s general manager. Gordon had picked old friend Fiona Nairn for the job, triggering a rash of speculation in the gossip columns. ‘She is caring, welcoming, attentive, friendly – the perfect Scottish rose,’ said Gordon of his new front-of-house manager.

But, more importantly to the gossips, Fiona was also the ex-wife of Scottish TV chef Nick Nairn, with whom Gordon had enjoyed a long-running feud – and whose own restaurant was just 15 minutes’ walk down the road. ‘I ate in Nick’s restaurant and the only memorable thing was the awful shag-pile carpets,’ had been Gordon’s typically forthright verdict on his rival’s former restaurant.

He had also heavily criticised his fellow Scot for spending too much time focusing on his television career rather than on his cooking. And, while this criticism would soon be levelled straight back at Gordon, it wouldn’t stop him from speaking out. For, as his empire grew, the most opinionated chef in the country was about to unleash a series of extraordinary attacks on his rivals, his critics and his former mentors. Never one to choose an easy life or a low profile, Gordon Ramsay was going to hit the headlines like never before.

TEN

I
t all began when Jamie Oliver started snapping at Gordon’s heels. The irreverent Essex-boy chef had been a massive hit as far back as 1999, when
The Naked Chef
was first shown on television and spawned a series of best-selling cookbooks and other ventures. The youngster had fast become one of the most visible, and richest, chefs in the business, overshadowing many of his more experienced rivals. In 2001, the experts compiling the next
New Chambers Biographical Dictionary
added Jamie’s name to their list, alongside Nigella Lawson and Rick Stein. Gordon Ramsay’s name didn’t make the cut, and it hurt.

Equally annoying, as far as Gordon was concerned, was the overconfident newspaper interview that 26-year-old Jamie had given the same year. ‘I am the ambassador of British cooking across the world,’ Jamie told the
Daily Mail
. ‘I am the first cookery programme ever to be sold to
France, Italy and Spain. I’m in 34 different countries on 60 channels. I do all the big-name chat shows in America. I’ve done more for English food throughout the world in the past two years than anyone else had done in the past 100.’