Gordon Ramsay is impatient and opinionated. He’s also dynamite TV talent
By Debi Enker
Radiating restless energy, Gordon Ramsay seems to function on a higher frequency than most humans and generate more static. The 57-year-old father-of-six started training for triathlons when he turned 40 to “escape”. He also tried goat yoga a couple of years ago in California but says: “That was a disaster. It shat all over my back.”
In a little over a month in Melbourne last year, he visited the gym 18 times, at 6am before a full day on set shooting his new reality-TV series, Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars. The place soon opened for him at 5am, so he could get through his regimen undisturbed.
Janine Allis and Gordon Ramsay co-host the new competition show Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars.
The Scottish chef and entrepreneur talks fast, every second word is “f---” and, as anyone who’s seen even five minutes of any of his shows will be aware, he doesn’t suffer those he deems to be fools without fully, frankly and often loudly voicing his views. He’s impatient, profane and sometimes abusive, but he’s also probably right when it comes to opinions about food and business, which have formed the foundation of a global empire he’s built, comprising restaurants, books, kitchenware and TV shows.
Driven by irrepressible energy and fierce competitive spirit, he’s made his name on TV over decades as a towering, volcanic kitchen dynamo and tough taskmaster in a succession of shows.
The initial, explosive impact came from the documentary series, Boiling Point (1999), where he was introduced as an ambitious young chef striving to attain a three-star Michelin rating for his London bistro and relentlessly roasting his staff in pursuit of the coveted accolade.
Since then, he’s done UK and US versions of Kitchen Nightmares and Hell’s Kitchen, as well as judging stints on MasterChef here and in the US, and a range of other productions (The F Word, Hotel Hell, Ramsay’s Best Restaurant). Mostly, he’s hauling aspiring chefs or recalcitrant restaurant owners over the coals to get them to lift their game.
Gordon Ramsay’s first foray into television was the 1999 observational documentary series Boiling Point.
Feared and respected, Ramsay is dynamite TV talent and he brings his customary commitment and dialled-up-to-11 level of energy to Food Stars, a format created by his company that’s already launched versions in the UK and US.
“This is a big one for Gordon,” says his co-host here, Janine Allis, who’s built her empire on the back of Boost Juice. “If he can make this show work, it’s like MasterChef.” Meaning an enduring, internationally successful franchise – that’s to say, a reality-TV jackpot.
Perhaps it’s no surprise then that the show resembles a casserole containing a range of familiar ingredients, with bits of MasterChef, The Apprentice, Shark Tank, The Voice and Survivor.
Created for the BBC, Food Stars grew from a desire to “highlight the country’s up-and-coming foodie businesses”, Ramsay says. Specifically small businesses run by motivated owners creating innovative products, but also enterprises having a hard time making their mark or expanding in a brutally competitive space.
If the hopefuls are successful in their pitches to compete on Food Stars, they’re selected to join a team headed by Allis or Ramsay, and they get to choose their team if both prospective mentors want them.
Then they’re required to participate in challenges that test their talents as cooks, marketing managers and creative thinkers in pressure-cooker situations, with the challenges involving local brands such as Chiko Rolls, Cadbury chocolates and Vegemite.
As in Survivor, the contest requires a combination of individual effort and teamwork, and Food Stars rewards its ultimate survivor with $250,000, plus a year of mentoring from Ramsay or Allis.
Ramsay says that “the whole format is in its infancy” and the Australian version is the only one in which he has a co-host. That’s because, he says, Endemol Shine’s executive producer, Marty Benson, a long-time force behind MasterChef, suggested it. And Ramsay listened because “Marty’s a powerhouse TV exec who knows his shit”.
“The worst thing you can do with Gordon is bore him because then he starts to climb things and throw things at you,” says Janine Allis, co-host of Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars.
So Allis literally came on board, with the team captains making their entrance on a private jet, its interior bathed in golden light as they’re heralded as “two of the world’s biggest names in food and drink”. A veteran of Shark Tank, Survivor and The Celebrity Apprentice – on which she appeared as an adviser to Lord Alan Sugar – Allis is no neophyte in the food industry or in television, and she’s not one to be intimidated by her screen partner.
Arriving in the opener in a fire-engine-red pantsuit that screams confidence and authority, she takes no shit from Ramsay. As they tussle for desirable team members, she calls him – disparagingly – “a good-looking rooster” and – affectionately – a “wanker”.
A publicity shot for The F Word.
Either they genuinely get along or they’re great actors and both say, separately, it’s the former, with Ramsay admiringly calling Allis “a firecracker”.
With the wry wisdom and experience of a mother of four, Allis says: “I had no idea what to expect. I only knew him from Hell’s Kitchen and he screams and yells and swears and makes these one-liners. I’ve dealt with Alan Sugar and I’ve dealt with all sorts of egos. I don’t think that I’ve ever worked with someone in TV – and particularly at his level – who’s got no ego.
“But Gordon never muscled me out of the show. He was kind, he was funny and he was incredibly generous in making sure I did the best job that I could. He realised that I could take the piss and that I could give it, and that he could give it and take it. The worst thing you can do with Gordon is bore him because then he starts to climb things and throw things at you.”
Allis says that she has a strong competitive streak – she wouldn’t even let her two-year-old win at cards – while Ramsay steers the show with his familiar vitality, noting several times in the early episodes that he “didn’t travel 12,000 miles to be second best”.
On location in the inner-north suburb of Thornbury, shooting a food-truck challenge involving Vegemite, he’s team leader, cheerleader and determined salesman. He bounds around, revving up his blue-team troops, enthusing about the menu that they’ve devised and sweet-talking the crowd that will assess their efforts.
There’s a festive, carnival-like atmosphere as the crowd waits happily amid the trucks, boom mikes, cameras, a crane and cables snaking all over the ground. Ignoring the biting wind and intermittent rain, they’re relishing the vanilla soft-serve ice cream with salted caramel and Vegemite fudge that Ramsay’s foisting upon them.
After production wraps, he embarks on a charm offensive to promote the show. He sings the praises of the contestants and their innovations: smoked eggs, edible coffee cups, freeze-dried goat cheese, tea made from indigenous ingredients.
He praises the show’s Melbourne base as a “foodie mecca”, noting that he used his time around the swift, 21-day shoot to sample its offerings, enthusing about the louche (a dish with torched bone-marrow) at the Filipino restaurant, Serai, and noting approvingly that he saw no queues at Starbucks: “I’d never seen an empty Starbucks until I came here: it’s pretty unique. That’s an indication of the demand for artisanal coffee. I never thought I’d come to Melbourne and find half a dozen favourite coffee shops.”
Ramsay’s thrown his customary energy into his time in the city and added another element to his continually expanding empire. Before flying out, with hopes of returning for a second season, he notes that, whatever the future holds, “At least I understand the f---ing ins and outs of a Chiko Roll now.”
Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars is on Nine, Tuesday and Wednesday at 7.30pm and 9Now.
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