GORDON RAMSAY HELL’S KITCHEN INTERVIEW

The proof’s in the pudding, and the proof’s in the talent and what I do know is that you are not going to be disappointed. I love it. It’s a passion, it’s heated, it’s frustrating, it’s rewarding, and then it’s gratifying when one of those doors open. Listen, when it doesn’t go right I still take the shit. When it does go right, I still take the shit. I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t. I’m excited for Season 9. It’s quite a big one this one. More importantly I suppose, crossing across America in search of that talent we’ve come up with some extraordinary chefs, and predominantly female have the edge on this one, but a quite interesting lineup. _GORDON RAMSAY

CHEF RAMSAY RAISES THE CULINARY “STEAKS” ON THE SEASON NINE PREMIERE OF “HELL’S KITCHEN”
MONDAY, JULY 18, ON FOX

Chef Gordon Ramsay opens the doors of HELL’S KITCHEN, and 18 new aspiring chefs dare to take center stage and brave the fierce heat of competition. Each chef must prove their skill, passion, and dedication to Chef Ramsay as they compete for the grand prize, a Head Chef position at upscale BLT Steak in the heart of New York City. In the first team challenge of the season, Chef Ramsay asks the contestants to prepare their signature dish and splits the chefs into two teams – the men versus the women. The winning team gets a taste of the sweet life when they wine and dine with Season Eight winner Nona Sivley at L.A. Market, while the losing team is left behind to scrub down HELL’S KITCHEN in preparation for their first dinner service. Following a sobering announcement moments before the grand reopening of HELL’S KITCHEN, tempers flare when the teams struggle to communicate effectively and the slow service forces diners to walk out before their entrees are served. Find out which contestant gets burned following the most disappointing opening dinner service in the Season Premiere episode of HELL’S KITCHEN airing Monday, July 18 (8:00-9:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX.

Hell’s Kitchen premieres Monday and Tuesday, July 18th and 19th at 8/7 Central.

At the end of the day, what do you get out of doing Hell’s Kitchen?

GORDON RAMSAY: Talent, I suppose, that’s what it is at the end of the day. Over the last three days it’s been a tough climate, everyone’s cooking more, not just professionally but personally, so the actual show gets better, I continue running a restaurant, and I think more than ever before, because we’ve had quite a long gap since the last Hell’s Kitchen was on, we’ve got some extraordinary chefs in the mix. Cooking shows are not slowing down. We pushed the menu out in a completely different direction this time and really upped the ante as well. I like the challenge and I like finding talent. That’s what really turns me on, I suppose.

One meal that you’d love a chef to cook for you?

GORDON RAMSAY: I’m a big lover of fish. Cooking fish is so much more difficult than cooking protein meats, because there are no temperatures in the medium, rare, well done cooking a stunning sea bass or a scallop. I had the most amazing fish yesterday and pasta pappardelle, and it was just cooked to perfection. Fish, one temperature, crispy skin, sweet, and absolutely cooked to perfection. So I’m always putting the chefs to the test, cook me some fish, please.

Do you eat out? And are you very critical when you do?

GORDON RAMSAY: I love eating out. I don’t deny that. But I don’t want 12 or 15 courses because the chef wants me to taste this or taste that. I just want to be able to decide. I spend more time in the kitchen than I have in the dining room, for obvious reasons, however, I just want to sit and indulge. I want the lights to be low. I want the service to be attentive. I don’t want a 15 minute dialogue on the day’s specials. I always say to the chef, just stop promoting the specials because your menu should be special, and you give me what you think is your best shot. I had an amazing dinner recently at the Lazy Ox Canteen and I sat there with a pig’s ear salad and had braised oxtail done in a ragout with pappardelle, and then I had this amazing panacotta, and that was it, a bottle of wine and I was done. Perfect.

Ego vs food?

GORDON RAMSAY: Unfortunately, egos get spiraled out of control. I suppose I love that level of confidence in a chef, but I also like that level of the control element and the way that they have the inner strength. If the vision is something that they can really pull out of them. So the ego, we don’t get carried away with stars and stripes, it’s what you put on a place every day should resemble you. It’s fascinating. I don’t see many out there that build such an arrogance, to some extent, because they’re telling themselves the dish is good, any good chef is picking up on the negative and it’s easy to ignore them.

How do you choose the people you have to work with daily on Hell’s Kitchen?

GORDON RAMSAY: In any business, any structure it’s not about a sous chef being number two or executive chef or executive sous chef, there’s no such thing. We have a team and we’re bloody good as a team; Andi worked for eight years alongside Michael Mina, one of the most prominent chefs in California; Scott Leibfried, that guy’s been there since day one. So I’m not saying they make me look good, but they give me untold support. And when I’m not there during the day my standards are implemented on a daily basis, and they’re like two head chefs so there’s three of us running it. Behind the team I see the same faces in the production. I don’t really get involved with the thick of it, but what we do get involved is the creativity. The producers this year, more than ever before we’ve really gone out of our way, not just to involve the charity aspect but highly creative of the moment challenges that really put these guys in the premier league of where the restaurant sits. And that’s why I want to keep it real. My fight is always against FOX, they want a show and I want a restaurant. The delightful Wolfgang Puck coming in this year and really demonstrating some amazing stuff, I mean, this is one of the most prominent chefs in the country today, and I suppose we turned it up in a big way, so the teams there, they made me look good, more than they could ever expect. But the foundation behind me is quite extraordinary because of the teaching that goes on. You see 42 minutes or 43 minutes and that’s edited and all that stuff, and that’s television, but there’s 150 hours of footage for 42 minutes and the training is extraordinary, and that’s what you don’t get to see behind the scenes what goes on.

What’s the biggest mistake that these chefs make when they sign on for Hell’s Kitchen?

GORDON RAMSAY: I think the biggest mistake they make, to be honest, they take it for granted. But listening to one another just to get the strategy in terms of becoming a team player whilst I want them to shine as individuals, shining as a team and a great leader is far more important than being egotistical and telling the group straight out. I like that kind of inner calmness with vision, and individuals that can motivate a team. When the chips are down, never, never, ever start blaming. When chefs start pointing fingers it’s always the beginning of the end for me. That’s the one mistake because they focus on their individual ego as opposed to the passion of the team that they should be collaborating together, as opposed to trying to outsmart one another, .get your head down and let the food do the talking.

What have you learned from doing these series?

GORDON RAMSAY: I quite like the variability in terms of both individuals learning and making a dish that’s been done ten times over for the last decade. But coming up with a stunning Mexican and Indian authentic delicious authenticity is something that very few chefs really understand. They need to know the diversity of the cross-sector multi-culture demand from restaurants today and not being just a one hit wonder. I always look at it, through my training from the age of 19 when I went off to France and went to Spain and I went to Italy, then I went down to the Caribbean and recently I’ve just come back from Cambodia, and I loved the pressure of cooking with no dairy, and it opened my eyes up to how exciting food can be without any dairy. I used all these little techniques that I’ve been discovering and learning. Cambodia was amazing for me, and Vietnam was just extraordinary. They didn’t have refrigeration units that they just take for granted and they fill twice a week. They go to the market twice a day. I tried to install that kind of respect and put them back in touch with ingredients, because I believe that that makes them a more diverse and a much better cook, which then, if you ever get to a stage of owning your own restaurant or becoming a phenomenal head chef in a business, they become multi-taught, multi-followed and they’re offering a completely different opportunity to their customers.

What’s the criteria you have used to evaluate these chefs?

GORDON RAMSAY: I study, I look at the different challenges that we face on a daily basis with restaurants, chefs, customers, problems. I look at the waste percentage. I look at the creativity in terms of the seasonality, and so I really turn it up. I really turn it up. This year we did an amazing charity event with close to $3 million. Then I want an individual flare coming from the control of cooking protein, filet, almost blindfolded in a way that you’ll identify the textures and you’re cooking with your eyes closed. In my mind the palate is paramount, and if you don’t know how something should taste then you shouldn’t be cooking it. I focus more on understanding what it should taste like first before we understand how to cook it, because you’ve got to understand what it tastes like before you can cook it.

Did the chefs over studied the tapes this season?

GORDON RAMSAY: Do you know what, this season the chefs over studied the tapes, which I never do, and everyone says, hey, oh my God did you see what happened? No, do you honestly think I’m going to go back and watch it after really living it and being there live. I have no problems going live on a daily basis. I don’t think FOX would want me to go live for two hours a night on Monday and Tuesday, God forbid. However, you see that they master what’s coming next, we’ve moved the bar, we’ve raised the bar. There is one extraordinary lady, her name’s Elise out of Pittsburgh, and she is rare. She’s a unique, rare chef. I’m not going to say anything more. But watch out for this one because you’re not going to be tired of her name. And the confidence is extraordinary; and I can say she can back it up with the talent, so it’s quite a phenomenon.

How do you find that the dynamic in the kitchen changes as the number of contestants dwindles down?

GORDON RAMSAY: To be honest, I cringe at the beginning and I go through that painstaking head down and work against us and I’ll wade through it. When we get down to seven or eight and I’ve really started focusing on the core talent, it is a dream for me. I feel like they’re my brigade. But this year for the first time ever when I got into one brigade I increased the size of the brigade, but my God I had a shock. I had a shock with that one brigade, because they thought they were going to be cooking with their new black jacket as a team, but I brought in a team of chefs that you’ve never seen before in Hell’s Kitchen like this, that good, and they gave them a run for their money. It was quite an extraordinary twist.

What is the secret for the show’s success?

GORDON RAMSAY: No one’s walking on water thinking that they’re untouchable. Yes, of course it’s important for success and we keep it real, I suppose. No one gets carried away. The prize this year is phenomenal and a prominent business position of head chef, a phenomenal prize, but the level of creativity is second to none. I strongly believe that you will start to like some of the stuff that we’ve done this year because it makes perfect sense. We brought it closer to the real world. I’m getting too old for this, to be honest. I feel right now that I am. I’m not saying it’s my last season, but I love it, I love it. It’s a passion, it’s heated, it’s frustrating, it’s rewarding, and then it’s gratifying when one of those doors open. Listen, when it doesn’t go right I still take the shit. When it does go right, I still take the shit. I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t. What I do know is that we have an amazing, talented group of chefs. I really focused on this year, more than ever before, that season nine is going to put a stake in the ground in a big way.

Do you think that chefs tend to over impress with their first presentation for you? Do you find them dreadful?

GORDON RAMSAY: They over complicate it, because if someone just served me a New York Strip with braised collard greens and the most amazing potatoes, I’d be like a pig in shit. So they over complicate it because they get too worked up and they get overambitious. That’s a problem with a lot of restaurants where you’ve got chefs that are moving too fast in front of their customers and they tell themselves that the more they fiddle and piss around with food, the better the customer’s experience. We know that’s wrong. If you want that kind of intricacy then go off and have a gastronomy put in front of you, but not for wholesome food. Let’s be honest, the time has changed out there and there’s a humble approach to food that we need to touch base with our roots on a more deeper, essential position, because it’s not about filet, foie gras, caviar, high end ingredients, it’s about a skirt steak. It’s about an amazing, stunning meal. It’s about a wonderful passion. So don’t get carried away. It’s all packed full of flavor. It’s not something that looks like an intricate sort of jewelry box. We want something immaculate but tasting phenomenal.

Hell’s Kitchen premieres Monday, July 18th and Tuesday, July 19th at 8/7 Central on FOX.