Q&A: Gordon Ramsay On 'Hell's Kitchen'

The Fox reality series "Hell's Kitchen" returns for a new season Tuesday, July, 21st with a special two-hour premiere from 8:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. 

Ramsay recently spoke by phone about the show, the differences between the U.K. and American versions of the show and which former winner he thinks has the best chance at long-term success.

Q: How was Vancouver-area restaurant The Whistler chosen as part of the grand prize?  Are you familiar with that restaurant?

Gordon Ramsay: We had several offers this year on the table in terms of the restaurants as potential gifts for the winners, and it’s hard right now fighting a global credit crunch, which we’ve all seen a huge downturn.  Whistler’s hosting the 2010 Olympics ... restaurant, yes, amazing.  The place is just beautiful.  Very few restaurants anywhere in the world get a chance to survive the way they do in terms of everything is sourced, 95% of their produce is sourced within 100 miles of their front door.  That’s a dream come true for any chef.  For a young winner to be in that position and to learn and respect what it’s like to use things only when they’re available, as opposed to have a fascination with fresh ingredients that can be obtained from all around the world.  The Whistler restaurant fit it perfectly.

Q: If the two-hour premiere is any indication, it seems to me the contestants are getting more and more confrontational, they’re starting to swear back more at you than you are at them.  Do you agree?  Do you find that’s true?

Gordon Ramsay: It’s hard, really.  It’s an industry language when they curse.  I don’t enjoy cursing actually. I suppose they’ve watched the show before and they think they want to come in with bravado, but I always say on interim, initially let your food do the talking.  You’ll be surprised how far you go in a short period of time. 

Q: It seems to me like you had to raise your voice just to get their attention. Do you feel like you’re ever being mean? Or is it strictly, you’ve got to raise your volume just to get some sense into their heads?

Gordon Ramsay: Sometimes to be a menace, honestly ... like dealing with petulant teenagers.  It’s frustrating, David.  It gets to you after awhile, but I suppose, like I said earlier, let the food do the talking and sometimes, I encourage that level of confidence, that’s great.  But when you have the arrogance, the confidence and you can’t cook, then you’re only going to look stupid.  It’s only a matter of time before they get exposed.  However, never, never knock out that kind of confidence from a young chef to begin with because you need that kind of, I suppose today.  Cooking today is far greater than it ever was, and more importantly, a chef’s role today has changed dramatically over the last decade, so I want to inspire them and I push them to the limit.  Of course they’re going to come back like a hardass.

Q: If we looked back in your life, to when you were first training to be a chef, is it barely possible that you were on the receiving end of some ferocious, profane lectures, and can you remember your worst … or the best lesson that came from such an experience?

Gordon Ramsay: Yes.  Some of my best disciplines are always by the French chef, Joel Robuchon in Paris.  We had a duck cooked in the oven.  It was in this big 30 kilo copper pan, and the pastry chef was shouting and screaming at me because I hadn’t browned the duck properly. So I said I’d do another one for him. Anyway, the pan got put in the oven, the pastry got put around the outside, and the whole thing had been put in the oven.  They cooked it for 45 minutes.

Of course, he didn’t wait for me to give him the second duck, so for some bizarre reason, they put the whole thing in the oven with no duck in there. It got sent to the dining room and I heard this big crash, bang, wallop when the chef came through. He went for me big time.  That stuff is unforeseeable. There is no way on earth you could ever put that on a screen, because it would’ve been a Hollywood blockbuster. 

I learned from my mistake. I went and did it again and I completely screwed up.  It’s harsh, especially when you work in a country where you’ve got a second language that you weren’t particularly fluent with at that time. You take it on the chin, you put your head down and you get on with it.

Q: Which winner from one of the past seasons do you feel has gone on to the most success, or has impressed you the most?

Gordon Ramsay: Quite interestingly, really, I thought Rock was an amazing winner, there are no two ways about that, very, very talented and Danny, again, very, very good.  It’s hard, isn’t it really, because you want them to use the position as a platform to continue thriving and learning. Even at 42 years of age today, I spent time in a restaurant recently in Sardinia where I put my head down and I went back to the floor as a learning process. 

I’d say Rock had the greatest potential, so far in terms of what he was doing, what he is capable of doing and to get the money and the fame, adulation.  Enjoy the year, but then get yourself back and do something really serious and climb the ladder, as opposed to trying to think that you got to the top of the ladder.  Because this is a serious game out there and it’s a tough, tough industry to survive. You can’t depend on the exposure of a TV screen to keep your feet on the ground and your food tasting delicious.  You’ve got to push yourself.  So I’d say Rock and Danny are two of my favorites, so far.

Q: And is there one contestant from any season, winner or otherwise, who reminded you of you as a chef, or as a younger person?

Gordon Ramsay: Again, Danny tenacious, quite wild, difficult to tame to begin with, very, very energetic in the kitchen, slightly crazy, and slightly boyish.  At the age of 21, he reminded me very much of myself with that level of energy.  When you are faced with an ingredient that you never, ever want to be intimidated by, and you want to bounce it around the kitchen and learn every section, as opposed to focusing on Poissonnier, focusing on the sauté, focusing on dessert, the grill, whatever may be.  He wanted to do everything, and that reminded me a little of myself. 

Q: After five seasons, how have qualifications and standards for aspiring contestants changed?

Gordon Ramsay: I suppose qualification now, was just over 13,500 last year, and they just started the casting for next year.  I suppose more than anything, chefs have gotten better, which is great news, which makes my life a lot easier.  I can be a lot more creative in terms of the menu. 

The challenges in terms of the, everything has to be done for a reason, and everything has to be done to make sense in terms of running a proper business today, and it’s not just about the food. With the contestants being a lot higher standard in terms of culinary experience, it’s been a lot more testing for me, but fantastic, because it’s raised the bar. We’ve got to that perfect service earlier on. We think back to season one, two and three, we weren’t hitting any form of consistency until week nine or week ten.  Now there’s been within week four, week five, so it really seriously turned up the excitement in terms of the challenges, taking them to places like Nobu, to have Matsuhisa cook for them. They’ve spoken to Wolfgang, they’ve spent time in their kitchen. It’s been a lot more creative from that point of view because the standard has become a lot better.

Q: On a personal level, if you could have any meal prepared for you, who would prepare it and what would it be?

Gordon Ramsay: I took my wife last summer to Thomas Keller’s Napa Valley, The French Laundry. We had dinner there with David and Victoria. I had one of the most amazing dinners ever. We stayed in the vineyard and just had the fabulous time. So if my last supper was ever going to be cooked by a chef, it would have to be Thomas Keller.

God, I started off with the most amazing potato and caviar soup, chilled. Then I had the ahi tuna, which was phenomenal. Then I had a roasted Foie Gras wrapped in fig leaf.  So, yes, that’s what I shall take to my grave.

Q: Not all of us have the cooking talent of you and the contestants on "Hell's Kitchen." So what is your advice as far as the two things everyone should know how to make, and make well?

Gordon Ramsay: Good question.  First of all, for me the secret is in the ingredients. You don’t need to start spending fortunes on organic foods and start becoming way over budget. The better the ingredient, the littler that needs doing to it. And then in order to create a little bit of confidence, start cooking with pasta.  Pasta is phenomenal.  Once you’ve cooked pasta properly for the first time it becomes second nature. 

Then after that, bake some bread. Make a focaccia bread or bake a whole mill loaf. Do something creative, and then put the labor of love into it in the beginning. When you take that bread out of the oven and you eat it an hour- and- a- half, two- hours later, you start to appreciate it more and then you eat less because you worked so hard to make it, you appreciate it in a much better way. So making pasta, cooking pasta and baking bread are two essential ideas to create a little bit of excitement, and you learn the basic, and then evolve it.

Flavor the bread, flavor the pasta, go to a fish, go to a meat sauce and take it to another level.

Q: We've talked a little bit about how you express yourself in the kitchen and I was wondering if there’s ever been a circumstance, what has been the time that you’ve said something that you wish you could’ve taken back, and to whom did you say it?

Gordon Ramsay: I was recently at a soccer match with Jack, and the team was losing one/nil and he came within three feet of scoring this goal and… Jack’s my nine year old son, and he side- footed it to try and be flash and he missed the goal.  So I shouted at them “Jack, you should’ve gone to Specsavers,” which is like the opticians in America. 

What would you call your opticians here?  Lens Crafters? “Jack, you should’ve gone to Lens Crafters,” and he come running up to me like he was going to shout and scream at me.  He said, “Dad, all the best players miss them.”  I thought, oh God, how right is he?  There was this silence, this air of silence across the soccer pitch where all the soccer moms and dads are looking at me saying, hey, hey, you may be a hardass in the kitchen, but give him a break. And I thought, oh God, here we go. So I learned to keep my mouth shut, and being on a soccer pitch is not the same as being in a kitchen when things are going wrong.

Q: A lot of tears tend to be shed on "Hell's Kitchen." Can we expect more of that this season?

Gordon Ramsay: Do you know what, I’ve come close to tears sometimes in excruciating pain. I can’t quite believe that they make the basic errors. Cooking a dish is fine; cooking it under pressure is a completely different ballgame. I always try to tell them from day one, pressure’s healthy. It becomes stressful when you can’t handle that. I mean, if you don’t want to become pressurized in this environment, then don’t be a chef. If you want to think about cooking, and it’s a high-five, laid back motion, then flip burgers and dress Caesar salad, don’t try to pitch in the premier league of restaurant. Build up to it, by all means.   

But it fascinates me on how emotional these individuals get sometimes. I’m there as a chef, as a support mechanism and, more importantly, for them to offload on me. It does surprise me, but they are pushed to the limit and sometimes it gets a little bit daunting when they’re away from their family, they have no mobile or their cell phone, they’re not in contact with the outside world and they’re purely focusing, almost like a boot camp, on winning that prize and sometimes it gets a little bit highly strung.

Q: Obviously you have a great relationship with Fox for "Hell’s Kitchen" and "Kitchen Nightmares."  Would you ever think of doing an "F-Word" for an American audience?

Gordon Ramsay: Yes, we’ve thought about that. The new "F-Word" starts in September across the U.K. and it’s really an exciting one because on the back of the downturn, in terms of business, we’re searching the country and finding the best local restaurant. And if I could put that into practice over here and help these struggling restaurants, cheap neighborhood restaurants that need that kind of boost, then I would love to expand the basics for the "F-Word" style and then have a bit of fun with it as well, at the same time.

Q: It seems that in the BBC version of "Kitchen Nightmares" and the "F-Word," you see a kinder, gentler Gordon Ramsay, and maybe a little more frustrated in "Hell’s Kitchen," the American version of "Hell’s Kitchen."  Can you tell us why that is, do you think, or if you think that’s true?

Gordon Ramsay: Good question, really. Just on the professional front, I never sit and study in terms in how the editors at Fox have an amazing way of dealing with the edit and the programs, Arthur Smith, who’s been the producer, at the helm of "Kitchen Nightmares" and the "Hell’s Kitchen."  In the U.K., we have an approach in terms of more documentary style.  We’re right through, halfway through the new season of "Kitchen Nightmares" now as we speak, and I have to say it’s one of the most… the stories are heart-wrenching and, more importantly, just handling this global recession we’ve been struggling for the last eight months in the U.K., and in New York, and in L.A., and in Japan, and in Paris. 

So, as I’m helping to turn my own business around, the first hand information is going straight into these restaurants. I think you’ll see a different side this year in a way that sometimes, when chefs confront, you know I have to get straight to the point, and the minute they start understanding why I’m there, let’s not forget, they asked me in there. I want to get on with the cooking and helping the business restructure itself. 

Listen, arguing is not a thing of the past, but getting straight to the point is something I can never stop doing.  They get very insecure too quickly on, the quicker you tell them the truth.  But the truth hurts. So a different chef in America to what it is in the U.K.? I don’t think it is, I just think the circumstances are somewhat different. But this year "Kitchen Nightmares" is almost, I’d say, on par with the U.K. version, and I’ll be interested to hear your feedback when you see it.

Q: Can you talk a little bit about what’s going to be different on "Hell's Kitchen" this season? You’re now in your sixth season. How have things evolved from last season to this season?  What will the viewers see that’s different?

Gordon Ramsay: Good question. The prize is phenomenal. There’s no two ways about that. Not just on the head of the Winter Olympics but having a chance to run in this amazing restaurant, the Araxi restaurant in Whistler, very few restaurants anywhere in world that function like that. Like I said earlier, to have 95% of the ingredients sourced, food and wine, within 100 miles radius, that’s a dream come true for any chef. 

I think the standard of chefs across the board is far greater. We’ve had a great support mechanism from various chefs from Melisse, Nobu, and I’ve really put them into the real premier league of high-end restaurants early on just to see whether it’s a sink or swim.  There’s always a tantrum, the roller coaster, the reward for being phenomenal.  We’re taking advantage of the Napa Valley, we’re taking advantage of the restaurants in and around California, and really trying to expose them and their potential  in terms of when you get this right in this industry, a) it’s the best job in the world; and b) it never seems like a job, it becomes a true passion. 

So, I had an amazing time and, more importantly, we’ve been a lot more creative in terms of the challenges and entered in a few twists and turns that are completely different.  My dream next year is to take it to a live week extreme so you actually see what it’s like across the board, making it bigger and broader.  This year is going to be very interesting.

Q: Did you happen to catch "The Chopping Block" at all on TV and if so, do you have any thoughts on why that show did not take to U.S. audiences?

Gordon Ramsay: "The Chopping Block" wasn’t on long enough for me to catch on to see it. I think it was on for a couple of weeks. I got it on TiVo and the minute I get back to L.A., which I can’t wait for, the last week in July, which I’m going to be spending the summer in Malibu, I will catch up on "The Chopping Block" on TiVo.