COOKING: Human pressure cooker Gordon Ramsay is also a successful business man and a passionate chef. He fires comments at Hugo Arnold.
Gordon Ramsay doesn't speak; he shoots comments at you with a speed, vigour and passion reminiscent of that scene in The Matrix when Keanu Reeves dodges metal balls. He is passionate about everything, opinionated, confident and very, very driven. "Sure I'm about fine food," he says, "but I'm about a lot else, too." His hands sweep the cafeteria at the Institute of Technology in Tallaght, where nearly everyone is feasting on sausages and chips. "This isn't food," he says, "and I believe everyone, and I mean everyone, should eat well."
Ramsey has suffered from a bad press for years. A supposed attitude problem in the kitchen, a penchant for slagging critics off, even to the extent of removing them from his restaurants, and a soccer career that never took off. He has heard it all.
He feels he has come a long way from the day in 1998 when he sold his flat and moved from Aubergine to take over Pierre Koffmann's old site in Chelsea and open his first restaurant.
What people are so quick to forget, he says, finger pointing, is how much hard graft went into it all, how much risk, how much stamina was required. "Sure I'm seen as the three-star chef now, but building that was not easy."
Ramsay is passionate about this word, build. "It's not about me," he insists, "it's about building a team." It's about a great deal of hard work, and programmes such as Jamie's Kitchen have helped enormously to explain the pressure a kitchen is under.
Boiling Point, the fly on the wall programme that many say showed Ramsay at his worst, seemed to miss the point and focus on the what, rather than the why. The pressures are phenomenal - a favourite word of his - and there isn't time to say please. His mentors - Albert Roux, Marco Pierre White, Guy Savoy - didn't say please either, and he is grateful to them. It's all part of the front line, he says. The mental games and the abuse are all character-building.
When Ramsay took himself off to Paris to work with Guy Savoy, he had no money, didn't speak the language and didn't have anywhere to live. "I was scared, but I knew I had to do it, to come through, and if I did, I could move on to the next stage."
"How important are Michelin stars?" I ask. From the man who has three, the answer is complex. "Sure they are important, but they are not an end in themselves." By way of illustration, he points to his role model, his "god", Alain Ducasse, who has multiple stars, restaurants in Paris, Monaco and New York, numerous consultancies and endless projects. "At the end of the day, you are running a business and it has to work."
He is also quick to argue that the stars are not his. "I play to my strengths, but to do that I have to manage, lead, work with others and it is that end net effect that results in stars and success. It is almost like you borrow them for a time, but you have a responsibility to make them work."
Hence the emerging empire. Gordon Ramsay Holdings is in partnership with Marcus Wareing and with Angela Hartnett, and for many, is seen as a revolutionary force in London hotel dining (The Savoy, The Connaught, The Berkeley). Ramsay says he would "love" to do New York. He is a consultant to Singapore Airlines, makes television programmes, and writes a column for The Times. Then there are the books - Gordon Ramsay's Secrets, the latest oeuvre, was published at the end of last summer.
Ramsay's secret weapon is his wife's father, Chris Hutcheson. He does the deals, runs the show, keeps everything outside of the kitchen on target and focused. Is it a partnership made in heaven? "Not quite, we have our moments and our disagreements, but, undoubtedly, he has been crucial in bringing focus to the business."
The book is a typical new-Gordon project, an idea to take all the passion and skill he possesses and write for a domestic audience. "People think we spend our time cheating in the kitchen, adding things that home cooks have no access to. This is totally untrue. What we are, however, is totally focused on what we are doing, which the home cook seldom is. When to season and how, why you are adding acidity, and when to stop. You can make a fantastic broccoli soup from broccoli and water, if you trim and season and reduce and add back, all at the correct time. Secrets is about sharing that knowledge."
Ramsay has been to Ireland only a few times, and has not eaten here widely, but thinks we are similar in many ways to Scotland. Some great produce, blessed with a tourism industry, and with some of the best natural landscape in western Europe.
The UK, he thinks, has seen enormous strides made in the past 10 years, but still has a long way to go in terms of food education. Children, he argues, need to be taught about taste, about food, otherwise they grow up divorced from the very thing that should keep them alive. His arms swing around at this point, by way of illustration, to the sea of chips and sausages surrounding us in the canteen.
He says too many chefs are using high-end ingredients too soon. At Aubergine, he was using belly of pork and mackerel - the latter, he is quick to point out, is part of the tuna family and sensational eating if handled in the correct way. "It was four years before I could afford to put turbot on my menu."
Hell's Kitchen - a new TV programme in which Gordon Ramsay teaches a group of celebrities, including Belinda Carlisle and Edwina Currie, how to cook - begins at 9 p.m. tomorrow on UTV and runs nightly all week