1. Why I'm Writing This.
Words cannot express my adoration and reverence for Gordon Ramsay. But I intend to try.
My initial title for this posting was "Gordon Ramsay: My TV Boyfriend," a bit of humorous hyperbole supported by the traditions that apply at my personal television website. I couldn't bring myself to use it. It was clear to me even as I typed that it wouldn't do. It lacks reverence and smacks of presumption. It's the sort of flippant nonesense that gets the bright young things on "Ramsay's Kitchen" called "cows" and "bitches" and things that get bleeped out on my television.
Besides, it's misleading. My love for Ramsay is untainted by earthly dross.
I am always drawn to people who energetically pursue a passion---a passion, as opposed to "Passion." For this reason, I enjoy reality programs such as "Top Chef" and "Project Runway." I have no interest in clothes or food----there is no time (or money) in my life for me to devote attention to either---but I adore watching young people who care passionately about some thing, some undertaking, having their mettle tested.
2. Hell's Kitchen.
Of the competitive reality shows I've watched, Hell's Kitchen---Ramsay in America---is by far the best. Unlike the other shows, Ramsay is always front and center of the test scenario, admonishing, correcting, swearing. About half of what he says gets bleeped, but it's easy enough to fill in the gaps. And for Ramsay, the cardinal sins for a chef or a would-be chef is lack of mindfulness and the failure to concentrate every moment on the food itself, the activity of everyone else in the kitchen, and the goal of perfection. Apparently a master chef must be a master at multitasking.
It requires the capacity to be a hard-ass for the entire time that the work is in progress. This is the part of the chef stereotype that turns out to be true. In the kitchen, Ramsay shouts, hurls invective at the heads of his herd of hapless amateurs, and sometimes seems on the point of sobbing with fury. "If you cook [this] in a nonstick pan IT WON'T STICK," he yells, his quite pleasant voice going up a couple of octaves. "THAT'S WHY IT'S CALLED FUCKING NON-STICK!" The last words are at a pitch so high his voice cracks.
He doesn't worry about being PC. When the winner of a weekly reward purchased one of Ramsay's books with part of her winnings, she asked him to write something in her book. "Something without "bitch" or "cow" in it," she told him.
But to say that he yells and swears a lot more than you might expect is to tell only a tiny fraction of the story. On the subject of food and the preparation of food, he is as blunt as it's possible to be about lapses of attention or kitchen etiquette; but somehow or other he conveys throughout it all that his rage and his passion are context-specific. He manages otherwise to convey tremendous friendliness. He seems like a fun guy. During a reward that involved a day out on a boat, one of the bikini-clad babes mourned, "I wish Chef could be with us."
On many of the rewards, part of the reward was his presence and you could see in the outspoken envy of the failed competitors that it was the opportunity to spend time with Ramsay that they must begrudged the winner. For all his scary intimidation tactics in the kitchen, he somehow managed to get across to these kids that he is someone they would fight to spend time with.
You could say he is the anti-Trump. Whereas Donald Trump speaks to his crew in blunt generalities, Ramsay's feedback is bluntly specific. Furthermore, he gives it to them during the competition. The winner isn't judged only by the end product, but during the entire process. He knows exactly where they are going wrong, and though the language in which he tells them isn't gentle (to put it mildly), the ones who can take the heat and keep their heads have a chance to make adjustments. "YOU'RE FINISHED!!!" he'll shout, but if the person doesn't crumble and gets her/his act together, that can turn out not to be the case. It's brutal in the nicest possible manner.
Which brings me back to why I love Gordon Ramsay. I've been a teacher myself in my life; I know that the only way to teach people practical skills or to refine their practice of them afterwards is to give them constant feedback. For this reason, I don't enjoy The Apprentice---which is all about projects being performed by people who don't really know what they're doing and who are judged on some "bottom line"---but I do enjoy Ramsay's Kitchen.
Which brings me to another point that distinguishes this show and shows such as Project Runway and Top Chef from The Apprentice, Survivor, and The Amazing Race. Ramsay's Kitchen and shows like it are---so far---the stories of people who are already pursuing a particular passion. The other shows are about people who want to win, full stop. The Apprentice contestants want to be something---"the" "apprentice"---not do something. They're working for a reward that they hope will lead to some sort of undefined association with one of Trump's companies. Neither the audience, nor the Trump wannabes, really know what it is they're working for.
Furthermore, there's such a difference in the contestants. The young people in Ramsay's Kitchen look for the most part like ordinary young people. Some of them are very attractive, but in their chef's regalia you can't really tell. They're there because they can all do the same thing and do it well. In contrast to The Apprentice, the first stage of the competition isn't a beauty competition, but a talent competition. And while I like to look at pretty young people as much as the next person, watching them flail about ineptly, trying to guess how to please Donald Trump simply doesn't entertain me that much. It's much more interesting to watch young people trying to work out how to do a task they already understand (or should understand) really well; how to be better at the task than anyone else.
I don't hate The Apprentice or Donald Trump or anything. I just don't find I get anything out of watching the show. I'm just past being interested in the drama of random interactions between pretty people, if I ever was.
And, as noted, Ramsay is usually right there in the thick of it with them. And when the contestants speak of him, you can tell from the altered tone of their voices how tremendously they respect him and his opinions and how much his approval means to them.
3. Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares.
But it's Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares that I love the most---partly because there's so much more of Ramsay but also because the show is filmed in England and is filmed in English towns I've yet to visit. Furthermore, his Kitchen Nightmares is broader in scope. It's not just about cooking; it's about the whole business.
I live in a town where restaurants seem to appear and disappear on a weekly basis. We of course have the obligatory strip of chain restaurants serving what was referred to on Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares as "ding-ding food" (which I can eat just fine) but we also have a fair share of "high end', high priced local restaurants.
My late husband Don was in the restaurant business. When he lived in England, he worked at some very fine hotels; but what he really enjoyed and would have liked to do here was consulting. I naturally picked up something of an education concerning the care and feeding of restaurants during the seven years of our marriage.
Ramsay is the master consultant. In each episode of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, he's on a mission to breathe life back into a moribund restaurant. Watching how he goes about it is an education in itself (and every restaurant owner and manager in America ought to watch these episodes repeatedly, since they highlight ways to avoid needing a consultant). And of course to do any good in the long-term a consultant would need to have the passion and energy that Don had and that Ramsay has more of than anyone ever.
On that show---and Nick and I recently watched a lot of them back to back---you hear a lot of excellent advice about how to run a restaurant, but the reason you need to watch it even if you're not interested in restaurants or don't agree with the advice or think it applies to you, you should still watch the show. The show is about passion for the work and there need to be more shows about passion to inspire us. In Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, passion is the nemesis of apathy---that dead-eyed dull going about one's daily tasks, feeling that none of it matters or is about you---which is the true destroyer of souls here at the Turn of the Millenium.
The show features kitchen after kitchen where you can practically see the fug of hopelessness, resentment indifference, ennervation. It's not a problem confined to restaurants. When people don't care about the quality of the work they produce, it not only means that the work will be of poor quality, but that the workers' daily experience and self-respect will be as well. Without enthusiasm, nothing is done really well. So much of this show is Ramsay trying to instill some of his own passion for the work of preparing and serving food into people who have forgotten how that feels or who have never known.
Perhaps one reason I find these shows so riveting is that I can see the application to my own life. The passion for an undertaking is in some ways its own reward. If you care passionately for your work---as I do for mine---you care passionately about the end product but also about the process of getting there. While doing each task----even those that are most mechanical---you get the maximum benefit you can. You keep learning. You keep finding out things you didn't expect and you keep moving on toward the next level.
When you're pursuing your passion, time passes quickly. There aren't enough hours in the day to get everything done you want to do. You might be as unhappy in your personal life as the next person, but even if that's the case, you have a built-in remedy against depression: doing what you love to do. You can feed your soul even if your life is shattered.
In my volunteer work, the people who seemed---and probably were---the most hopeless were the ones who either weren't capable of passion or who had channeled theirs too narrowly, toward one other person who had let them down or toward some objective they hadn't equipped themselves to reach. They were living miserable half-lives because they had no real enthusiasm for anything they were doing. They were never out of their own heads or connected to the world.
Passion for one's work translates into a passion for life. It keeps you connected through the worst of times. In the people who are mostly strongly driven by it, it shines off of them like a visible aura. It's the basis of the quality we call "charisma."
And the great secret---something you can see Ramsay struggling to convey to people who prior to his intervention had lost all enthusiasm for whatever tasks they'd been hired to do---is that the passion for a task can be deliberately cultivated. It starts with enthusiasm for achieving small successes and goes on from there. Doing something well really is its own reward. It's beginning of self-respect and self-esteem.
These shows give more glimpses of Ramsay's charming and rather complicated personality than Hell's Kitchen. My favorite scene of all such glimpses is Ramsay romping by the sea with the kitchen crew from a restaurant in Sandgate. First, there was the oyster-eating contest; then there was Ramsay running into the English Channel with a Frenchwoman over his shoulder.
"I quite like him," said Nick. What he really means but---being English himself---won't say, is that he loves Ramsay almost as much as I do.
If you want biographical information, first click on the link to his official site (above). There you'll find an extended CV. There is a photograph of him holding a blond child on his lap, presumably one of his children. She is looking at the camera with that amused humorousness that intelligent English children often display from a very young age. (In the photo, she evokesTenniel's Alice, my favorite child in fiction).
Further information about him can be found here. According to the Wikipedia entry, his wife is a Montessori-trained schoolteacher which somehow makes perfect sense to me. (And I do love his occasional references to "the Missus.")
Finally (I mean finally for me; there's obviously plenty of information available on the net), there is an interesting bio at BBC America here. And that really ought to be enough---more than enough---personal information to hold anyone. To be honest, I didn't do more than skim it. I don't like to know too much personal data about people I admire for their character or their achievements. If you're different, check it all out.
5. Hero worship?
"What would you do if you met your hero Gordon?" Nick mused---an unlikely scenario in the best of all possible cases, but interesting to contemplate. "Would you be all tongue-tied?"
The answer to the question is "yes", but not for the reason he imagines. Though shy, I'm past the age and stage when shyness can really silence me. But in the case of Gordon Ramsay, the problem would be thinking of anything to say. Beyond my admiration for his work (in the most abstract sense), I've got nothing.
I'm not even interested in the food he cooks, except abstractly. Other than chocolate (to which I am allergic), I just don't care about food. I don't cook ever; and when I have to eat, I prefer things that can be eaten with one hand while reading or doing something else. The only food I really like that I can still eat is salad, more specifically the salads that Nick---who hates all raw vegetables and also all cooked ones, but who makes the best salads anywhere---dishes up what he refers to as a "trough of compost." "Am I troughing for you tonight?" he will ask.
Well, and oatmeal. I like oatmeal with cream and raw sugar too. Actually, I'd be perfectly okay with the plate of "stodge" that an aspiring chef dished up for Ramsay and a restaurant owner in Wales. "Like something the missus would make," Ramsay remarked, though it wasn't clear whether he meant his own. (If so, good for her, I say).
I like looking at and hearing about the dishes that Ramsay's competing chefs put together, and about his own dishes, but I don't have enough of a palate to imagine them. You could marinate sea bass in the most elegant of sauces and "plate" it up with artistically arranged manna from Heaven and a garnish of apples from the Garden of Eden, and it would just be fish with bread and fruit to me. I feel a bit more of an interest in the desserts they serve, but it's purely hypothetical. I'm not proud of it; it's just a fact.
And on a strictly frivolous note, I like to listen to him talk. He is Scottish by birth, and he grew up in Stratford-upon-Avon, so I can't explain his accent, but it's the sort I like best. It sounds more London/Estuary than Midlands to me, but of course my ear for English accents is only somewhat better than your average American's. Nick says it's a southeast accent, and he does know accents, so I don't think I'm wrong.
So if I try to imagine meeting Ramsay, I can't imagine having much to say to him other than the completely inadequate, "I admire your work." But I do. And I greatly admire him for undertaking to teach people who've forgotten what it takes to live the good life: finding your own life's work and pursuing it with energy and commitment.
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