- He's a Scottish born chef and restaurateur.
His restaurants have been awarded 60 Michelin stars
and currently hold 14.
He's known for creating TV programs
about competitive cookery and food.
He's Gordon Ramsey,
and here are his Top 10 rules for success.
(loud swooshing)
- My advice to young chefs from the age of 16
to sort of 29, 30, is 14 years of a sponge.
You're absorbing knowledge.
Don't take a job for the sake of money.
Don't worry about earning 500 pound a month or year
or more somewhere else.
Go and get knowledge, because that becomes
a bigger passport for everything.
The money will come once you've mastered your craft
and become incredibly talented.
Work for big chefs and find a different level
of comfort.
When things get too comfortable
and you're still living with your parents
and you still got your first job
and you don't want to move out
because everything's too comfortable, get out.
Put yourself in a strange situation
in the middle of Barcelona.
Put yourself in the middle of Paris,
put yourself in the middle of Belgium
and see what's available.
That's amazing how much confidence it gives you.
More importantly, it's great to sort of
eat and travel at the same time, fantastic.
If there's one thing I've learned and experienced,
is that, if you don't open up and you don't delegate,
then you'll kill yourself.
And if there's one thing I've managed to understand
is the art of delegation, because,
if I can pass on to Claire Smith and to Arya
my palate, my understanding, and my knowledge,
then grab it, run it, and then pass it on to your team.
Don't hold that inside.
The key to a successful business
is remembering that the customer is king,
because without them, we're nobody.
And so I, from a chef's point of view,
always put myself in the customer's situation
where I see it from their eyes,
I don't cook for chefs.
Every time chefs come into the dining room,
first thing they do is turn up the plate upside down,
and start photographing the food,
and they're constantly dissecting the food
as opposed to enjoying it.
So, I always look at it from a customer's perspective,
because they're king, and without them, we're history.
That takes years, to become a great chef.
What you need to do is establish confidence in yourself.
Cooking is an amazing journey,
and don't think you can learn it within three or four years.
It's like studying medicine,
it's over a 10 to 15 year period.
I'm 42 years of age and I'm still learning
new and exiting things now that's I'm bringing
back to the fold.
But more importantly, vision, I think.
I didn't think French was important, that skill,
and I kick myself now, because I would live in France
for three years, and became bilingual.
But I wish I'd studied harder
with a second language under my belt.
That gives you a different culture,
gives you a completely different level of confidence
learning French, French cuisine, mannerism,
and cooking in a very robust, tenacious way.
So, yeah, vision and open mindedness.
And we never cut corners.
The minute you start cutting corners in food,
time out, there's no worse job to have than cutting corners
in food.
So, attention to detail, an amazing exciting journey,
one of the very few jobs anywhere in the world
where you can travel, get paid, and experience
phenomenal food anywhere in the world, brilliant.
I'm going to teach them the common sense rules
to ensure front of house runs smoothly,
starting with the basics.
- On the menu tonight,
I think everything should be quit tempting,
I don't know if you're into fish or meat is your favorite,
but everything tonight is absolutely fresh.
- [Gordon] Stop.
- Yeah? - Yeah.
Okay.
Right.
What you need to do is (censored) relax.
A great service is attentive without being noticed.
So far, you're making my (censored) itch,
and it hasn't come out yet.
That's how irritated you are.
Right, ladies, sit down with Donald and I at the table.
Take an order of four.
Right, off we go, here we go.
- Good evening everyone.
- (sighing) (censored)
- And for you all, tonight, what would you like?
- [Woman] The beet root starts and the halibut for me,
please. - The beet root
and the halibut.
- (censored) All right, come here, you.
- Really that painful? - Yes, it was painful.
Here's the thing.
Sit down. - Yep.
- Where's the pad?
Look at that.
I swear to god, it's the writing of a six-year old.
It's all about engaging in the customers.
To start off with, darling, what would you like to start,
madame? - Can I have prawns, please?
- Prawns over Michaels? - And the chicken.
- Certainly.
So, P and C.
And madame? - Mackerel Halibut please.
- Mackerel Halibut, certainly, of course, lovely.
And it's just there, "P M M C C C".
- That is a god damn revelation.
- Relax, you don't have to have everything in detail here.
But you'll be surprised, three tables down the line,
30 tables down the line, if you continue to work at it,
you start to become incredibly charming.
Do you know why?
Because your confidence levels up there.
Stay in front of the competition,
because there's two ways in this industry.
Either you move with it, or it moves you.
And I've seen so many sad stories across the decade,
where chefs have just got lazy.
Got lazy, given up, and lost that hunger
to be competitive,
because it's the best job in the world
that's not really a job, it's a passion.
Because when you're rubbing shoulders,
and here we are now, 10 years later,
and I've got a restaurant next door to Jamie Oliver's,
and we're both literally two meters apart.
Phenomenal chef, and we keep each other on our toes.
So that's exciting for me,
and that's been the one key issue across the ten years
of filming "Kitchen Nightmares".
Never, ever, ever give up.
My first passion before food was, was football.
But I was always an eater, great lover of food,
and I grew up partly in Scotland, partly down South.
So we had that sort of token of appreciation
for home-cooked food.
Then I was very lucky to get on foundation course,
spending the last year of my school at a foundation course.
Studying math, english, two and half days a week,
and then learning to cook for two and a half days a week,
and it was sort of a new experiment.
And then we had trouble with buying my first set of whites,
and chef knives, and we depending on the bamboo round table
to come up with something like 85, 90 pounds
my mum and dad didn't have to get me
my first set of whites.
So I remember that day now and how ecstatic and happy I was
when I got given my first set of whites, my knives,
and all of the sudden I wanted to go on that mission.
Football was a sort of huge burning ambition,
and I was trying to decide.
Yeah, I had a horrific injury where I smashed my cartilage
and then all of the sudden, what do you do,
you sit there and get bitter,
but I had this little burning desire that this sort of,
this chef, this ambition,
and then I sort of channeled that frustration
from football into cooking.
In the way that I just wanted to learn.
The foundation course was huge.
Their sitting yield's 706.
I was a mature, part-time student,
and mum and dad didn't have the money
to send me to college full-time,
so it was hard.
But what I did do was take a job in the industry,
I worked six days a week and went to college
one day a week.
So then everything started becoming clearer.
I got my qualifications, the basic,
and then went to London.
And that's where it really just took off.
This is my little niçoise, but a specialized niçoise.
And it's the kind of thing I pick myself up
after cycling 200 K.
A beautiful piece of tuna, going to brush that first,
just a little bit of mustard, stops it from drying out.
Now, sesame seeds.
Just beautifully roll that down.
I always think about food everywhere I go.
So when I'm training, I'm never very far away from food.
I had that extraordinary moment at the start of Kona,
two years ago, where I was pedaling,
at sort of half past five in the morning,
awaiting for that amazing cannon to go off.
To get rid of the nerves,
I just started thinking about recipes and dishes
and how do I get through this 3.8 K swim.
Garnish, very simple, you've got potatoes.
We'll start with a little teaspoon of olive oil.
And we'll get these potatoes nice and crispy.
Cut them in half, and then we'll put that side down.
So, in my bowl, got some really nice slot rings.
Olive niçoise, black olives.
Some green beans.
And then in there, I'm just going to open up
some of these little anchovies.
A little touch of vinaigrette.
This is classic vinaigrette made with lots of lemon juice.
And then look, just mix that up, nicely.
With some fresh parsley.
Your tomatoes.
House made vinegar.
Fresh lemon juice in, that lifts everything.
You work 14, 15 hours a day to perfect
an absolutely stunning dish that disappears
in two and a half minutes.
And that's what I said, it loses you.
You get on that journey and nothing else matters
except what you put on the plate.
Because you start off with these raw ingredients,
and then you're off to that journey.
60 minutes later, you've got this bit of magic.
Also, it's an incredible passion.
It's a huge canvas.
Take your summer leaves, I want to use the little hearts,
and just open them up, gently,
without sort of ripping them.
Get down to the heart and cut the hearts into four.
Take this.
Nice and crispy.
And then from there, as they start to cool down,
just put a little touch of vinaigrette over that
and hit them with your parsley.
Food was my calling, I think,
because that was the way I could sort of disappear.
Disappear, travel, learn,
and get really excited about something.
And my first dream was to go to France
to understand why were they the sort of foundation
of cooking, why did they start it, how did they start it?
And I disappeared, I became French,
and within 18 months, I was fluent in the language,
I was holding my own in a foreign kitchen,
and I was seriously cooking my ass off.
Now, for the dressing, very, very simple.
Touch of the vinaigrette, and then some fresh lemon juice.
That gives a nice lightness,
vibrancy to the dish as well.
And just lightly dress them.
My first set of knives was bought by a charity
because my parents couldn't afford
to send me to cooking school.
And this knife wallet was a swimbo,
it was bright yellow handles, and trust me,
I couldn't cut butter, but they looked the part.
My mother had a tear in her eye because she was upset
she couldn't afford it.
My first set of whites and my first set of knives,
I've still got them.
Finally, the tuna.
Get the pan nice and hot.
Put a teaspoon of oil in there.
Tuna into the pan, 90 seconds, each side.
Out.
And literally squeeze some fresh lemon juice on there.
When you slice it, let the knife do the work.
Fingers on top and just slice through.
Nice and carefully.
On.
Three nice slices.
Food, you're on a journey,
and there's something quite amazing about the way you cook,
of giving pleasure.
My dream when I started out as a chef
was to discover every ingredient,
and never be intimidated and not knowing what to do with it
to that level of perfection.
I think about 97% of the way there,
there must about three or four percent of ingredients
that I still haven't discovered yet,
and that's the exciting thing about food.
And that is what I call my specialized tuna niçoise.
(censored) delicious.
When you get all this knowledge
and the advice for young chefs
that are excited about opening their own business,
don't shoot too high.
Restaurants become successful because they cook within
the vicinity they're sat within.
Don't start reaching for stars and stripes,
focus on your customers, they're your biggest critics.
Secondly, keep it local.
Become the best bistro, then after the bistro,
take it up another level.
But make sure your customers you have gained
go up with you, don't stand or shoot too high,
or it'll come back to bite you on the ass.
I'm on a mission to road test
some of the best celebrity chef cooking courses
offered to you.
Food fanatic Algo Zilli is my next target.
The cheeky little bastard said maybe one day
I'd learn how to cook properly.
Well, now, he's got his chance to teach me.
So, I'm going undercover to road test his cooking course
to have a bit of fun and to see what I can get away with.
Zilli's course costs 352 pounds,
and on it, you learn how to make stock,
different types of pasta,
and how to prepare and cook fish.
- Can that gentleman come and sit up here, sir?
Can that gentleman come up here.
- I can't wait to learn some nice things today.
To get on this course with beginners,
I've told him I'm a novice.
But will he notice that there's really
and award winning chef in his kitchen?
Time for a bit of fun, and the odd clue.
- What you don't want to do with stocks,
is you don't want to mix too many colors into the stock,
too many color vegetables.
- [Gordon] The stock's overheating,
so I take the matter in hand.
Will he twig?
- Hands on. - He's listening.
- Mr. Zilli, I think it's ready now.
I think it's ready.
- Okay.
Put the tomato soles in if it's ready.
- [Gordon] He's impressed, but a bit oblivious.
Brilliant.
Next up, Zilli's showing us how he makes pasta.
Now it's our turn.
Finally, I'm in a course where I get to make something.
- See, this is when you've added too much flour
too quickly, so it's really hard.
- [Gordon] So he thinks he's crap, does he?
Time for a second clue.
(upbeat espionage music)
Will he spot that there's Michelin star pasta being made
right under his nose?
- Look at this, man, look!
Never made pasta before.
Look at that.
We've got pappardelle, we've got fettuccine,
we've got round- - Blimey!
Even after all that, it hasn't clicked!
Come on Aldo.
Two hours in and the course moves on to Zilli's favorite,
fish.
We've got to prepare our own plates of fish
for cooking.
Let's see what he makes of this.
Surely he'll smell something fishy when I finish
before most of the other's have even begun.
- Have you ever done before, this?
- Aye.
So that's good, aye, that, no, aye, yes.
That, no.
Thank, thank you.
- He's never done it before, so there's no excuse.
- [Gordon] So Aldo's missed the clue yet again,
or has he?
- Do you know what, you remind me of Gordon Ramsey?
Doesn't he remind you of Gordon Ramsey?
- I thought that when I saw him, yeah, yeah.
- He looks like his dad.
Are you sure he hasn't sent me his dad?
- Ah, I'm about to get rumbled.
Time to come clean.
Mr. Zilli.
Gordon Ramsey would season them.
- Would Ramo season them?
I season after cooking, because I don't like salt.
I can't eat too much salt,
and Gordon Ramsey is a fucking nightmare, and so are you!
(all laughing)
Did you know I've known you since you were standing there,
right?
(all laughing)
- Took you (censored) two hours.
I came today to learn something.
- [Aldo] And you've learned nothing?
- I've learned (censored) cod.
(all laughing)
- Hang on, hang on, keep it on, you look much better.
- Thank you so much for watching.
I made this video because Frank Robert John Pierre
asked me to.
So if there's a famous entrepreneur
that you want me to profile next,
leave it in the comments below
and I'll see what I can do.
I'd also love to know which of Gordon Ramsey's
Top 10 rules meant the most to you.
Leave it in the comments and I'll join in the discussion.
Thank you for watching, continue to believe,
and I'll see you soon.
(loud swooshing)