There’s no doubt that Gordon Ramsay is one of the biggest names in the restaurant business. He’s an international sensation whose cooking chops (he has multiple Michelin stars under his belt) have made him a household name. He’s starred on several TV shows, and has restaurants all over the globe. He enjoys considerable success, but fame has a way of bringing on the haters, and Ramsay has a lot of them. What is it about Ramsay that makes him so reviled? In some cases, his many feuds can probably be chalked up to professional jealousy, but it definitely goes further than that. Many people simply can’t stand his personality, while others have found themselves as the target of one of Ramsay’s cruel comments. For one reason or another, there are a lot of people who hold a grudge against the millionaire chef. Here are some of the people who can’t stand Gordon Ramsay.
Anthony Bourdain
The late chef, Anthony Bourdain, was often pretty critical of Ramsay, but his beef with the chef was not entirely personal. Back in 2012, he expressed his disdain for him when Ramsay applied to trademark the name The Spotted Pig in the UK. Ramsay had no immediate plans to use the name, but the trademark would have effectively stopped April Bloomfield and Ken Friedman, of New York’s The Spotted Pig, from branching out across the pond.
Bourdain took to Twitter to call Ramsay’s move “shameful pathetic” and “despicable.” He accused Ramsay of appropriating the brand built up by Bloomfield. Ramsay, however, claimed that he had no harmful intentions, calling the trademark an “innocent mistake.” He eventually turned the trademark back over to Bloomfield, but not until several months had passed. Whether Ramsay really was trying to do the right thing or he was just caved in to the criticism is uncertain.
Mario Batali
Mario Batali’s brash personality clashes with Ramsay’s, probably because the two celeb chefs are so much alike. The feud between them has been going on for years. After Batali said that Ramsay’s cooking is “dull and outdated,” Ramsay shot back, mocking Batali’s orange shorts. “Now he goes about town calling me Fanta Pants,” Batali told The Guardian in 2009. Batali escalated the feud even further by banning his rival from all of his restaurants. “Ramsay’s people called trying to book tables and I said no,” he said. “I won’t have him in there.” Batali did say that he’d be happy to lay the feud to rest. “If he called me himself and said, ‘Let’s sit down for a drink’, I’m sure it would be fine. We’d be cool. But right now it’s not cool.”
While the two still aren’t exactly friends, Batali has hypothesized that Ramsay is “just playing a role,” telling Eric Ripert on his show, On the Table “He’s a TV guy. He’s like playing the bad guy in Macbeth. That’s just the role he’s got. I don’t think he’s like that honestly.”
Marcus Samuelsson
If Marcus Samuelsson’s memoir, Yes, Chef, is to be believed, he has a better reason than some to hate Gordon Ramsay. According to his memoir (via Eater), Samuelsson’s dislike for Ramsay goes way back. He said that he first noticed Ramsay’s less-than-stellar personality when cooking with him at a promotional event. “There were a handful of chefs there… and Gordon was rude and obnoxious to all of them,” he said.
A couple years later, when he landed a job at London’s Lanesborough, Samuelsson was asked which British chefs he admired, a list that Ramsay didn’t make. “I thought the best way to handle it was to say nothing about him at all,” wrote Samuelsson. “Nothing good, nothing bad. I guess he was offended at being left out.”
Ramsay allegedly called Samuelsson, saying “How the f*** can you come to my f***ing city and think you are going to be able to cook without even f***ing referring to me?” Samuelsson said that the tirade went on for several minutes, and ended with Ramsay saying “I’m going to make sure you have a f***ing miserable time here. This is my city, you hear? Good luck, you f** *ing black bastard.”
