Gordon Ramsay

by Neil Simpson

  Over the next few years, Gordon entered a series of deals with other restaurants and restaurant groups. He agreed to rewrite the menus for Michael Caine’s restaurant, the Canteen. The company which had helped put up the money for Aubergine was also expanding and wanted his input into its other projects. One of them was the reopening of the old Overton’s restaurant in St James’s Street as L’Oranger. Gordon took on a management role there as executive chef while asking his old Le Gavroche colleague Marcus Wareing to come back from Paris to be head chef.

  Finally, as Britain’s newfound love affair with celebrities gathered pace, Gordon joined forces with another ex-footballer, former Leeds United star Lee Chapman. Lee and his actress wife, Leslie Ash, were moving into the restaurant business and planned to set up a celebrity-friendly restaurant and club called Teatro in the heart of Soho. They wanted Gordon, as executive head chef, to help draw up the menus and set the standards that the kitchen team should follow.

  Once more, Gordon got on the phone to try to arrange things. He asked Stuart Gillies, another of his former colleagues and proteges, to take charge of the brand-new £130,000 kitchen being built in an old office block behind the Palace Theatre. In total, 16 kitchen staff were recruited for Teatro – all of whom had been tested out at one of Gordon’s other restaurants over the past few months.

  At first, all went well at the new venture. An unlikely list of guests ranging from Geri Halliwell and Robbie Williams to Chancellor Gordon Brown came to eat and be seen at the club. But, behind the scenes, storms were brewing. Reports of Lee’s lifestyle and the relationship with his wife were regularly featured in the media and Gordon was not impressed. He decided that whatever the financial cost he had to cut all ties with both Lee and Teatro.

  When reporters asked him about the split, he told the Daily Mirror. ‘There were all sorts of things happening late at night which were just beyond belief. I’ve witnessed all the screaming and shouting. I saw some pretty horrific things I don’t wish to go into because it’s not pleasant for anyone, but it’s pretty low. The embarrassing nights were when Leslie was at home with the children and on the phone looking for Lee, and Lee was asking myself and head chef Stuart to lie for him and say that he’s not there. But he was upstairs trying to chat up some bird. Leslie’s the most endearing woman and so down-to-earth. She deserves a knighthood to put up with that kind of crap from him.

  ‘At Teatro, I always hung around out of respect for Leslie because he’s a big guy. I remember seeing him at four in the morning, abusing the staff. He pushes the self-destruct button because of his ego.’While accepting that it’s okay to have a drink in the kitchen, Gordon pointed out that their need to draw a line if you want to run things smoothly.

  Moving on from Teatro wasn’t as easy as Gordon had hoped, however, and immediately after he dissolved the business partnership he bumped into Lee in the street – literally. ‘One night, on my way from Oxford Circus I went on to Old Compton Street and bang – there he was. Lee kept blocking my path. Eventually, I had to stop a police car and ask them to intervene so that I could get on to my next appointment.’ Over the next few years Chapman’s mood did not change. In 1997, he was charged with common assault after a row that left Leslie with a black eye and facial bruising. She took out a restraining order against him after he followed her to the home of fellow actress Caroline Quentin. Then, in 2004, Leslie ended up in hospital after suffering injuries that both sides said had been sustained during a bout of ‘rough sex’.

  Back at Aubergine, the news was much, much better. Within 12 months of opening, the restaurant wasn’t just making money – it was winning awards. First came the news that Gordon was being named ‘Newcomer of the Year’ by Caterer and Hotelkeeper magazine – which is a lot more important than it sounds. Winning a ‘Catey’ is seen as the restaurant business equivalent of getting an Oscar. And in a year with tough competition Gordon had apparently won his by a mile. ‘His was simply the most stunning meal I have had in the past 12 months,’ said judge David Young, an area manager for AA Hotel Division who practically ate out for a living.

  Aubergine itself got some great press at the same time. ‘Unlike some new ventures which peak early and then fail to get any better, the judges felt that Ramsay was still improving. He is not someone who is just sitting tight and marking time,’ said fellow ‘Cateys’ judge Michael Raffael. And there was even better news to come. Gordon had always said that, if he couldn’t get an FA Cup Winners’ medal from football, he wanted to collect some Michelin stars for his cooking. With Aubergine he got one. Then another.

  Michelin stars continue to be the gold standard for chefs and they are the holy grail for newcomers like Gordon wanting to make their names. Printed in secrecy each December and released every January, Michelin’s restaurant guide has been going for 105 years – and has been entirely independent and unbiased for each of them. Restaurants are visited by totally anonymous inspectors who turn up or book tables like any other customer and pay their bills in full without saying who they are. There are no favours, no freebies and no clues about who is doing the judging or when a restaurant is being scrutinised. What inspectors do offer is experience. They each visit an average of 240 restaurants a year (and sleep in around 130 hotels) and any restaurant can receive up to 12 random checks in any given year before it is rated.

  Input and opinions from Michelin’s readers can also be taken into account before a restaurant is graded, with the next wave of inspectors told to check up on any areas which are giving others concern. ‘The mystery of Michelin is what makes it so important,’ says Gordon. ‘You don’t know the criteria that have been set, what the inspectors are looking for or when. That’s why every December is hell in every kitchen in Britain. We all go through a nightmare of guesswork and gossip trying to work out who will be in and out of the next guide.’

  Of the several hundred thousand restaurants in Britain, fewer than two dozen are awarded a first Michelin star each year – and they know it can be taken away at any time if their standards slip. Even fewer restaurants gain a second star, which shows the food, the service and the overall feel of the room has reached another level. At the very top of the tree is a tiny band of chefs whose restaurants have been deemed the very best in the world – these are the illustrious holders of three Michelin stars.

  No one knows when or how often Gordon Ramsay’s Aubergine was visited by Michelin inspectors. But, within 18 months of opening his doors, Gordon found out that their verdict on him was good. That first vital star was awarded in January 1995, when he was just 28. Over the next two years, the cooking and the overall standards at Aubergine would not just hold steady but actually improved, and the second star was awarded in 1997.

  By then the great and the good were flocking to find out what was going on. Celebrities in particular had fallen in love with the restaurant and its increasingly high-profile chef – though Gordon couldn’t always be bothered to ingratiate himself with them. Princess Margaret, David Bowie, Sean Connery and Robert De Niro all became regulars, while Madonna learned that Gordon was far from star-struck. She wanted a table for ten one night for dinner. She didn’t get one. ‘My largest table is for six and I don’t care who the fuck she is, we don’t do tables for ten,’ he told his assistant. ‘Her PA then asked if I would go to the Lanesborough Hotel [at Hyde Park Corner] and cook in her suite for £5,000 and I said no, because I’m not a prostitute.’

  Gordon also admits that he might not have bothered to introduce himself even if Madonna had cut down her guest list and booked the table for six – because he rarely ventures out of the kitchen during service. He had a kitchen team of just seven at Aubergine, low by London restaurant standards, and he demanded to see every plate that was produced before the waiters took it to a customer. He also wanted to see every plate coming back after a meal, to check exactly what had and hadn’t been eaten. It left no time to play mine host in the dining room – which was just how Gordon liked it. ‘I’m not a smarmy-arse. I don�
�t think you should walk into the dining room and grace tables, standing there like some starched stiff erection, gawping at customers and asking how the food was, going round shaking hands. I’ve never done that, and I can’t suck up to people.’

  The confidence that his food could do his talking was what kept Gordon going through all the early mornings, the late nights and the endless stress of running his own business. He was paying himself around £24,000 a year, substantially less than his maitre d’ was earning, so that he could plough as much as possible back into the restaurant. Friends say he worried constantly about money and was always doing sums to check his finances remained sound. For example, after spending an essential £7,000 revarnishing the restaurant floor, he sat and worked out how many plates of lobster ravioli and other dishes he would have to sell to recoup the money.

  But towards the end of 1997 Gordon was finally allowing himself to believe that he could recoup it – and more. Aubergine had survived the curse of 11 Park Walk and was turning into one of London’s ‘must visit’ restaurants alongside those of all the more established master chefs. His name was becoming known alongside those of all his heroes in the industry, and after each exhausting 18-hour day he felt closer to his ultimate goal of winning three Michelin stars. Back then, it really did look as if his life and his business would be a success. It looked as if being forced out of Rangers and taking the plunge back into catering had been the right move.

  As the months passed and the accolades mounted up, Gordon decided he might even get back in touch with his father to see if he might finally get the parental approval he still craved. Looking back, Gordon says that for the first time in his life he pretty much allowed himself to relax. Which was precisely when he got his first death threat.

  FOUR

  DEATH THREATS

  ‘If you know what’s good for you, you want to check underneath your car before starting the engine.’ For a long time, Gordon said these were the chilling words that came in a letter sent to him at Aubergine early in 1998. They were just one of many threats made that spring. Other letters warned him of an arson attack, of late-night beatings on his way home from the restaurant, and of death.

  The police were called and it turned out there was more than just the anonymous letters to investigate. A Range Rover had been parked outside the restaurant for two hours the previous Friday and when the dinner service had begun someone had climbed out of the passenger seat, walked calmly up to the front desk, grabbed the reservations book and run back to the car. With the engine already running, the Range Rover had soon disappeared in the early evening traffic.

  At the time, Gordon said that his first thought was that a rival in the industry was hoping to sabotage his business. But it turned out to be a lot more twisted than that. Taking a reservations book in the pre-computer age was a massive blow to a popular, expensive restaurant such as Aubergine. It was where the names and contact details of every booking for up to six months ahead were stored. Without the book, a restaurant had no way of knowing who or how many people would be arriving on any given night. They couldn’t confirm any bookings or confidently make any new ones. ‘Only someone in the trade would know the full true value of a reservations book,’ Gordon told reporter Christina Golding after the theft. Only a rival would know that what they had stolen was worth its weight in gold.

  But would a rival want to twist the knife by faxing Gordon the previous night’s pages every morning? And would they go to the trouble of doing so from a different print shop in London every day? It was when these faxes were being sent that the first set of letters began to arrive. And with them came defaced copies of magazine articles about Gordon, covered in obscene drawings and gruesome requests for a table for two.

  The police never found out who had stolen the reservations book or sent the obscene letter. They felt it could have been a rival, it could have been an unhappy diner, it could have been a madman. But it was none of these people. Years later, Gordon came clean in an interview published in the New Yorker. He had arranged for the theft to take place himself. He had made up much of the drama, largely in the hope of getting extra publicity for his fledgling business.

  At the time, (with the vital reservations book genuinely missing) Gordon and his team tried to carry on as normal, juggling bookings and squeezing in and serving any extra diners who turned up in the confusion. ‘Just forget it,’ Gordon was told when the police investigation finally wound down. ‘Put it behind you and try and move on. Focus on better things.’

  And fortunately, after years of being single and putting up with some unsatisfying short-term relationships, Gordon did have something good to focus on. Her name was Cayetana Hutcheson and she was a trainee teacher who was working part-time as an assistant manageress at Terence Conran’s famous Le Pont de la Tour restaurant beside Tower Bridge. Cayetana, whom everyone called Tana, was just 18. She was pretty. She was funny. She was confident. And she was engaged to Gordon’s best friend.

  The trio, Tim, Tana and Gordon, would meet up on the banks of the Thames outside Le Pont de la Tour in the early hours after their shifts had ended. They would sit and gaze at Tower Bridge, watch the traditional Thames barges drift by and talk about kitchens, cooking and customers. They would also meet at Tim’s flat, where Gordon often stored his Yamaha FZR motorbike. And Gordon grew more and more determined to see Tana on her own.

  At first glance, they didn’t seem to have a huge amount in common. Tana had been born and brought up in a tiny village in leafy Kent, a far cry from Gordon’s council estates in Glasgow and Stratford. She had become a weekly boarder at a private prep school in suburban Dulwich before the family had moved further into London and she had switched to a secondary school in Holland Park. She had a full-time mother and her father, Christopher, ran a successful print company. Hers was a close-knit family – her parents had stayed together and she had two brothers and a sister to complement Gordon’s two sisters and a brother. But, for all the differences in their backgrounds, both Gordon and Tana say there was an obvious spark between them from the very start. And, luckily for Gordon, the spark between Tana and Tim was fading.

  ‘I think the relationship had run its course and it was just a question of making a bit of an effort to get out of it,’ Tana says of the way her engagement finally ended.

  Gordon and his motorbike were to provide the impetus. ‘One night, I phoned up and Tana sounded upset about something and I said, “Well, I’m coming to pick my bike up,” and we ended up going for a ride through London at 2.30am in the middle of summer. It was fantastic and I’ve never forgotten it. That night was when we knew something was going to happen between us,’ says Gordon.

  Tana admits she needed a tiny bit more persuading. ‘First of all, he drove me mad because he kept going on about our age difference. But I was flattered by his attention and pretty quickly I was certain that I wanted to be with him. He had this aura from the start. I loved his passion, his dedication and his determination,’ she says. ‘He just struck me as being so ambitious and driven.’ The respect seemed to be mutual. ‘I was working at Le Pont de la Tour to supplement my income while I was training to be a teacher and I think he admired that about me as well.’

  The couple’s early dates were not easy, though, because they were both working long hours and were rarely free either in the day or in the evenings. ‘So what happened was Gordon would pick me up from work on his motorbike and maybe drive out to Banbury. We’d sit by a river there and talk for hours. Later, when he had moved to London, we would meet at 2am after he finished work and go to a club or find a place for late drinks. We’d then be up the next morning for work at 6am. It was exhausting but exhilarating. Looking back, it’s amazing that we made it work, but we did. The relationship was exciting and we inspired each other and there was always a strong chemistry between us. We had some wild times and lots of fun. But very little sleep.’

  With everything falling into place both at work and at home, Gordon felt ready for even more
challenges. Being with Tana energised him, he says, and restored his faith in good relationships. This was particularly important to him back then, as his previous short-term relationship hadn’t ended particularly well. While saying he has never done anything untoward with an annoying customer’s food, he admitted he had ‘tampered with’ vinaigrette he made for his girlfriend after a row. She left him, and six months later came out as a lesbian. He never found out if the two events were connected.

  Desperately hoping history wouldn’t repeat itself with Tana, Gordon was also desperate to cram even more hours into the day. He had signed a deal to write his first book, hoping it could improve his reputation, force him to research even more recipes and, perhaps most importantly, earn enough money to clear some of his debts.

  A Passion for Flavour turned out to do all three, though the book wasn’t universally liked by critics or readers. Gordon had put a hundred recipes in it, including those for soups, starters, fish and meat dishes and desserts. He adapted several of Aubergine’s most popular dishes so that people could make them at home. But he refused to compromise on either the ingredients readers were supposed to use or the effort they were supposed to put into their work. ‘It’s essentially a restaurant manual rather than a home cookbook and it’s certainly not for the beginner,’ said one early reviewer, not that keen on the idea of tackling a steak dish that took two days to prepare.

  ‘Gordon Ramsay appears to be a serious chef and he seems to expect the same from his readers,’ wrote another. ‘There are precious few shortcuts in these recipes and you may sometimes feel you are being told what to do rather than being helped.’