Gordon Ramsay: "I haven’t been this excited since I got to open Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in 1998"

Few chefs are as globally synonymous with food as Gordon Ramsay, so it seems only fitting that he is taking on the herculean task of opening a collection of new eateries and bars set to be the tallest in Europe. Who better to attempt to defy the theory that the higher you go, the worse the food gets, than the Next Level Chef himself?

February saw the opening of a host of new restaurants from Ramsay at the top of 22 Bishopsgate, the second-tallest building in London. There’s Restaurant Gordon Ramsay High, an intimate 12-seat chef’s table, Lucky Cat and an accompanying bar, as well as the Gordon Ramsay Academy. The coming months will see the opening of a Bread Street Kitchen and a rooftop bar.

It’s a momentous occasion for a chef whose career has been defined by London. Restaurant Gordon Ramsay High, in particular, is the second RGR to open after the original – which still holds three stars – opened to great acclaim in Chelsea in 1998 and became the subject of the cult television series Boiling Point. To open even one restaurant with your name attached is a fairly big deal. To open a second after the first achieved such success is, no doubt, a deeply personal challenge. All of that is to say that Ramsay’s new universe of food perched atop London is a pretty big deal – and demonstrates that the formidable chef is not content to rest on his laurels after almost three decades of hard graft in the kitchens, myriad restaurants and TV shows.

Molly Codyre travels up to the 60th floor to catch up with Ramsay on the ways in which London has shaped his career and the significance of these openings in the city where it all began.

Gordon Ramsay: We have just started ducking underneath those clouds. How beautiful is that?

Foodism: We’ve had almost all four weather systems in the last 15 minutes.

GR: It’s pretty exceptional, isn’t it?

F: So much of your career has taken part in this city. How do you feel like London has shaped you as a chef?

GR: I was 18 when I first came to London. I got taken on as a second commis chef at the Napier Hotel when they launched their banqueting suite. I still have those little moments of reflection when I walk across Berkeley Square and see the staff entrance into the Mayfair Hotel. London is this incredible melting pot with a multicultural, underrated foodie scene that is now pretty prolific and prominent. London gives you thick skin. I would never have survived in Paris for two years had I not come from London. I would never have understood the suburbs in other major cities if I hadn’t had the London experience.

F: What does it mean to you to run a restaurant in London?

GR: It’s real. It’s so unpretentious. We live in Wandsworth. I’m now on the school run, dropping my son Oscar off at school, crossing the common, and walking past the pond where I used to sit out on Friday and Saturday nights carp fishing with Marco [Pierre White] after we finished our service at Harveys. In the summer, we’d be there until two or three o’clock in the morning, and then wake up at six, still there on the pond. This city – it’s home. Everywhere I travel in the world, everyone wants to know what London’s really like. You need to live here to understand how these boroughs function; their independent market stalls and farmers’ markets.

F: What do you think is unique about cooking and eating in London?

GR: We have these incredible purveyors, suppliers, and producers, whether it’s local cheese, honey from the city, or the fabulous, fabulous wine in Kent, just 90 minutes outside London. You can get salt marsh lamb from the River Crouch. And then you look at the gin we’re distilling now, the local beers – it really is artisanal. The coffee shops are laced with independent heavyweights that want to make you the best coffee and focus on the technique of dry roasting. It means so much to them to serve you a coffee with no milk, so you can understand the flavour profile.

The interiors at Lucky Cat 22 Bishopsgate

F: And if you were clocking off, say, by the pond with Marco in West London after a night on the pans, where would you be going to eat?

GR: We’d head to Chinatown, to the New Diamond. It was that go-to, even after hours, that would serve beer in a teapot. We’d sit there until 3am with hot and sour soup, Singapore noodles, and the most amazing Peking duck, and we’d just chew the fat after service.

F: You’re currently looking down at the city you worked in for most of your life. How do you feel about opening a second Restaurant Gordon Ramsay here?

GR: I couldn’t be more excited. The industry has taken a bashing. Covid was devastating, and we had to sit on our hands. When we started pitching for this, years ago, I knew I had to outsmart the competition to land the deal. It’s a big investment for us – we’re spending tens of millions of pounds. But the building and what we’re doing is unique. We’ve got this 360-degree view of everything from Tower Bridge to the Walkie Talkie. We’re literally looking down at their viewing platform. How cool is that? I haven’t been this excited since I got to open Restaurant Gordon Ramsay back in 1998, way before you were born.

F: The sheer scale of what you’re doing up here is impressive. There are not many places of this height in London that take the food very seriously.

GR: We had the big, final pre-opening meeting on Friday with all the staff. And the number one statement was: don’t depend on the view. Offer something unique. Let the view enhance that experience.

F: Where do you hope these openings will sit within London’s food scene?

GR: That’s a good question. I never like to dictate customer profiles; we have customers flying in from all over the world. This is a special offering though: from Lucky Cat to the Lucky Cat terrace with our beautiful retractable roof, and then RGR High is a little foodie heaven, literally in heaven. We sliced half of Royal Hospital Road in Chelsea, and for the first time in 27 years, picked it up and transported it to the sky. I’d like to think it’s this 12-seater engine room of absolute utter indulgence.

F: What are the differences between designing a fine dining menu in Chelsea compared to here in the city?

Native lobster on the menu at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay High

GR: The exciting thing is that there are 12 seats. We’re open five nights a week, with one seating per night. The diner isn’t in at seven and out at ten. We have much more freedom here. The kitchen’s open plan. And we have the interaction in the middle of the seats where there’ll be a little table and we’ll be finishing dishes. I want diners up and off their seats between courses, standing behind the pass, listening, watching James [Goodyear].

F: It’s been 27 years since you opened at Royal Hospital Road.

GR: Don’t. Oh my God. Shit. It’s been so long.

F: How has the city changed since then?

GR: The city has become more cultural. You think of those little pockets; Brick Lane is still very inspiring. Some of the best food I’ve ever eaten – Indian, Pakistani, and Afghan food – has been down in Brick Lane. Then I think of the Shoreditch side. No one spoke about Shoreditch and Hackney 20 years ago, in terms of what’s going on in food and drink. Notting Hill has a cluster of restaurants now; it’s incredible. And then Borough Market – just the footfall there is crazy. Those markets are just breathtaking. They’re like fucking movie sets. These purveyors, hard-faced, hard-knuckled, real thoroughbreds who believe in their product, from an amazing steak and kidney pie to incredible sparkling wine.

F: How has dining changed in that time?

GR: It’s become more meaningful, less pretentious, less foo-foo. Those booming restaurants in the nineties… it got arrogant, it got stiff. There are still restaurants out there now that create the scene, but now we’re more real than ever. Culturally, we need to protect and train more to make sure that this hospitality sector is as exciting and inviting as it was 20 years ago. We’ve become very protective over our coffee, very protective over our oysters and fish and very, very protective over our bread. Some of the artisanal bakers now are off the charts and everyone’s got their own little starter they’re feeding in their fridge at home. My daughter Tilly froze hers before she went to New Zealand.

Sushi platter at Lucky Cat

King crab salad at Lucky Cat

F: No way!

GR: I said, “Tilly, you are freezing these things like you’re freezing your eggs, for God’s sake. It’s a fucking starter girl. You are producing a loaf.”

F: Can you freeze them and resurrect a sourdough starter?

GR: Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Tilly would tell you that live from New Zealand. That’s how important bread is now in this country. And that’s exciting.

F: Your influence is much more far-reaching than your restaurants. You’ve launched many careers. What does mentorship mean to you?

GR: I was placed in some very big chefs’ hands when I was young. My job now is helping to create that talent. Royal Hospital Road, oh my God, the talent that’s come out of just that one restaurant alone in the last two and a half decades is huge. It’s about being unselfish. It’s about allowing them the passport to freedom to become their own successes without you. You need to be that pillar of strength and support, but you also need to push them out. It takes a long time to create a chef like Angela Hartnett, Clare Smyth, Marcus Wareing, Matt Abé. They’re at the top of the game.

I’ve always been solution-finding. Yeah, I’m tough. Yes, I’m firm. Yes, I absolutely don’t make the same mistake twice. I don’t compromise on standards. You need to be prolific in your coaching, then you need to be prolific in how and when and to whom you pass that baton. You need to have trust like no other because there’s a lot at stake. And not everybody’s cut out for that. So you need to be selective. I’m absolutely dialled in when I focus on talent because I give them everything I’ve got. I think it’s evident that they’ve gone on and done good things because they’ve taken the leap of faith.

Restaurant Gordon Ramsay High

F: Chefs are unfailingly positive about the training they received in your restaurants.

GR: Yeah, it’s important. There are other people who don’t give their chefs that kind of freedom because of fear. I’m the opposite. I can’t get any higher, I can’t reach any more success. I strived for that level of perfection at three stars. And then, after that, I wanted to make sure that whoever was by my side went on to achieve exactly that. Seeing Clare Smyth go straight from two to three stars in that short period of time, after 12 years by my side running the Royal Hospital Road, shit, I was the happiest man in the world when that announcement came. I knew she had it in her. Matt Abé will be the next one.

F: It’s such a symbiotic relationship, mentorship, do you feel like there are still things that you can learn from those people and vice versa?

GR: I stay close to that coal face. I was at Dorian on Saturday night, and to see the level Max Coen is cooking at now, I’m just so glad that I was part of that success. It’s got one star, but the food tasted easily like three-star Michelin, yet it has paper tablecloths and he calls it a bistro. It reminds me of Aubergine because it was a neighbourhood bistro, but we went from zero- to two-star Michelin. I didn’t have a proper kitchen. I remember asking Marco if I could run down and cook my fucking crème brûlées in his oven because my oven had no thermostat. I used to put one crème brûlée on the pilot light at a time because it was the only space I could control that was consistent. It took forever to cook 12 crème brûlées. I’ll always remember having that neighbourhood bistro.

F: We’ve chatted about Tilly’s interest in the kitchen. Do most of your kids want to work in food and hospitality?

Gordon Ramsay on top of 22 Bishopsgate

GR: Tilly’s a one-off. Tilly’s 22. She self-funded her course at Ballymaloe last September. She’s now travelling through New Zealand, Australia, Southeast Asia, then she’s off to Kyoto, Japan to study with a family. She’s expressed massive interest in food. I said ‘You need to go away and come back to the fold with something different’. I’ve never wanted to employ my own kids in my business because I never want James to say, ‘Oh, fuck. It’s Ramsay’s daughter,’ or ‘It’s Ramsay’s son. We can’t tell him off.’

F: It’s brave to go into a career in the kitchen when the family name carries such weight. How do your children react to your television persona?

GR: That’s a tough one. In terms of the reaction, I think it’s funny, isn’t it? They come to the taping sometimes. I’ll ask them, do you want to celebrate your 18th birthday on Hell’s Kitchen? They said, “No, dad, fuck off. I’m not. Because If I send the food back, I’ll get into trouble.” But they do. They do come and send the food back. So they create a reaction from me. They know how to push my buttons.

F: That’s what kids are for.

GR: Last year, we hosted Master Chef Junior in the US and Tilly was a judge. I said a dish was caramelised. She said it was burnt, definitely, and that I should get my eyes tested. So I listen to my girls. I listen. I don’t know how they feel when it all kicks off, but they do goad me. They do push my buttons.

F: Children are like your biggest mirrors, aren’t they?

GR: Yeah, exactly that.