Gordon Ramsay shares his tips on how to make the most of your dining experience. Photo / Getty Images
Gordon Ramsay shares his tips on how to make the most of your dining experience. Photo / Getty Images
He is one of Britain's most successful chefs, with three Michelin stars under his belt and a string of restaurants around the world.
And now Gordon Ramsay has revealed his three golden rules for getting the best out of a dining experience, reported the Daily Mail.
The 50-year-old chef said customers should avoid specials, be suspicious of outlandish boasts and be prepared to haggle for their wine.
"Specials are there to disappear throughout the evening. When they list 10 specials, that's not special," he says.
The outspoken presenter also recommends booking a table for at least three if you are planning a romantic meal for two. He says this will improve your chances of being able to spread out and avoid "getting stuck in the corner like a doorstop".
On ordering wine, he says that in order to get the most reasonably priced bottles, customers should ask for the "bin end" list - the bottles with scratched labels, vintages that are about to be rotated out or poor sellers that restaurants want to get rid of.
"We have a fear about talking to sommeliers because you think you're going to be ripped off," he says. "So get the sommelier to come up with a great glass or great bottle and give him a price. And make sure it's under $30."
The father-of-four, who owns restaurants in London, America, Italy, France, Qatar, Hong Kong and Dubai, also says there are certain things he would never order off the menu.
"When they turn around and tell me it is the 'famous red lasagne', who made it famous?" he demands.
"They start coming up with these terminologies, saying 'and the wicked, famous, best in the country profiteroles.' Who said that? Who named that?"
Ramsay, who trained under Albert Roux, Marco Pierre White and Guy Savoy, is famous for his foul-mouthed rants on numerous hit TV shows including Hell's Kitchen, and his acerbic comments have landed him in hot water on several occasions. The US-version of his hit series The F Word debuts on Fox on Wednesday.
Gordon Ramsay giving a contestant a piece of his mind on the TV series Hell's Kitchen. Photo / Getty Images
His notoriously bad language embarrassed Channel 4 after an unedited episode of his Hotel Hell aired by mistake on midday last month. Ramsay used the f-word six times in 15 minutes before the episode was pulled.
At the time on social media, one viewer, Roxy, wrote: "Today's little treat was waiting for Channel 4 to realise they'd aired an uncensored version of @GordonRamsay hotel hell at 11am."
In 2009, Ofcom rapped him over the "sheer intensity" of swearing in a two-hour special of his show, Ramsay's Great British Nightmare which featured 115 examples of the most offensive swear-words in the first 40 minutes alone.
The watchdog found that the relentless tide of f-words had not been justified and said the broadcaster had not met "generally accepted standards". Foul language was used 37 times in the first 15 minutes of the programme, which was shown soon after the watershed.
Ofcom said this was delivered in an "extremely intense" and at times "aggressive manner".
Last month, Ramsay revealed he and his wife have agreed they will not leave his reported £113 million ($205 million) fortune to his children, Matilda, 15, twins Jack and Holly, 17, and Megan, 18.
He said: "It's definitely not going to them, and that's not in a mean way; it's to not spoil them."
"The only thing I've agreed with Tana is they get a 25 per cent deposit on a flat, but not the whole flat. I've never been really turned on about the money and that's reflected in the way the kids are brought up."
He also said that he does not let his children join him and his wife in first class because they haven't worked for it.
