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The brash and confrontational Gordon Ramsay is as well known for his bad temper and four-letter outbursts as for his unquestionable culinary flair.
Now the Glasgow-born chef has picked a fresh target for his rage - the Big Mac. In a rare interview, he also offered a tantalising
insight into the drive and ferocious temper that have propelled him from chopping vegetables in pub kitchens to a multimillion-dollar international empire.
But a few scores need to be settled.
Ramsay-watchers will not be surprised to learn that there's a history behind his latest outburst. In his attack on junk food, he rekindles his war with mentor-turned-nemesis Marco Pierre White.
White has just horrified the world of haute cuisine by claiming that the secret of his success was the Knorr chicken-stock cube. But it was his comments about the fast-food chain McDonald's that really enraged his fiery former pupil.
"From a chef's point of view, Marco is talking absolute utter crap," Ramsay says in the kitchen of his eponymous west London restaurant.
White claimed that McDonald's offered better food than many of London's top restaurants - several of which Ramsay owns - and praised the US chain's consistency, saying: "You have to look at whether restaurants offer value for money, and they offer excellent value. I am not saying you should live off them, but there is a time and a place for McDonald's."
Ramsay, the proud winner of 10 Michelin stars, is the last person who would share such a sentiment.
"Did you see what happened to that guy who ate fast food for 30 days in the Super Size Me documentary?" Ramsay asks. "To turn around after that and say that McDonald's is consistent ... it is consistently bland. Strip a Big Mac of everything it's filled up with and you've got two bland basics: fat and fodder.
"When you think of how exciting it is to make a hamburger from a chef's point of view - with ground mince, ketchup, tabasco and onions - and how easy that is, then why do you have to buy that crap?
"When you've got children, you have to scare them - to make them understand that this kind of thing is not good for you," says father-of-four Ramsay.
"We're 20 years too late for this shit in terms of banning junk food," says the chef, who decided to pursue cookery after an injury ended a promising football career with Glasgow Rangers.
He started in White's kitchen at Harvey's when he was 19, before going on to study under other celebrated names in Britain and France.
He won a Michelin star of his own for Aubergine at the age of 28.
Ramsay now splits his time between business interests in Britain, France and the United States.
It has been reported that at his latest venture, the Narrow, in Limehouse, east London, a third of the dishes are from British Regional Food, a cookbook by Mark Hix, one of his rivals, whose company Caprice Holdings is behind the Ivy, Le Caprice and J. Sheekey.
Ramsay denies stealing any recipes and says he and Hix are friends.
He was in a belligerent mood as he prepared to film a TV commercial for BT Business. The mere mention of business is enough to send him into another White-inspired rant, this time about why his former boss's businesses faltered.
"Chefs are shit at running businesses," Ramsay says. "When you look at the muck-ups with Marco and Jean-Christophe Novelli, and what they've done in terms of how their businesses have disappeared and sunk without a trace, it's because they've tried to run those businesses themselves."
He gladly leaves the business side of his multimillion-dollar empire to his partner and father-in-law Chris Hutcheson.
"Chefs are just shit at things like IT," says Ramsay. "Employ somebody to do it for you. Play to your strengths and improve your weaknesses."
But playing to his strengths is not always a guarantee of success.
Ramsay's latest major business venture, a New York restaurant called Gordon Ramsay at the London, had a rocky start. Although it is booked many months in advance, the critics have not all warmed to it.
New York Times' food writer Frank Bruni got Ramsay's back up by giving the restaurant two stars out of four and then criticised all manner of other things on his blog.
Ramsay was furious. "The fat, lazy thing about Frank Bruni was all the little seedy, undercover blog bullshit," says Ramsay. "I don't give two f***s about it. Never have. Never met the guy. Not even remotely interested. I'm being judged on my persona as opposed to my food, and you know what? F*** it.
"The thing I find fascinating is, what qualifications do you need to become a food critic, then? None. Good luck to them.
"You look at Giles Coren, who's got an advert for Birds Eye fish fingers, and he's the food critic of the Times and it's like, 'Hello'? A.A. Gill writes cookbooks for the Ivy and Le Caprice, takes a nice advance from them, and then comes to pan others. You know, f*** all that shit."
- Independent
