Gordon Ramsay on his 'painful' failure to crack Glasgow

The chef opened Amaryllis inside the luxury One Devonshire Gardens Hotel in 2001. Despite earning a Michelin star in its first year, the restaurant suffered persistent losses and closed in 2004. Ramsay blamed the lack of local demand for fine dining as one reason for shutting up shop.

“It was fully booked for six months in advance, Friday-Saturday, but Monday to Thursday it was a fricking ghost town,” he tells a new Netflix documentary, Being Gordon Ramsay, released today.

“No one could justify spending £120 for dinner on a Monday night in Glasgow, and so I left with my tail between my legs. It was painful, painful.”

But the failure was a “wake-up call” that led ultimately to his biggest venture yet, at 22 Bishopsgate in London. Ramsay’s dream of opening restaurants and a culinary school in one of London’s tallest buildings is the steel rope running through the six-part series. 

Having one’s own Netflix documentary is rapidly becoming de rigeur in certain celebrity circles. David and Victoria Beckham, best friends with the Ramsays, had one each. Just as their films were co-produced by Studio 99, a media company founded by the former footballer, Being Gordon Ramsay is produced by Studio Ramsay Global. 

A crew led by series director Dionne Bromfield followed the chef for a year. The result is a mix of the familiar and the new. There are reams of Ramsay effing and jeffing for those who haven’t seen it many times before. Far more revealing are the scenes at home and the extended interview alongside his wife, Tana. This is Ramsay on the couch in every sense, though never on the ropes. 

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Tana is “the foundation”, he says, recalling that she looked like “a young Julia Roberts” when they met (no offence to the current JR, of course). Of their six children, ranging in age from 27 to 18 months, four are seen on camera. 

It is to his birth family that Ramsay turns first. Born in Johnstone, the family moved to Stratford-upon-Avon when he was nine. Mum worked three jobs, his father was an alcoholic, and his brother a heroin addict. Ramsay has been open about it all and is the same here. “I’m not embarrassed by my past,” he says. “I got dealt a dysfunctional hand. Big ******* deal.”

Yet the past can still make him emotional. While he knows his mother is proud of him, he never received the approval of his late father. “Never once did I get to sit down at a table and say, ‘That’s for my dad’.” With Ramsay, the kid on free school meals, everything comes back to food.

Whether running the rule over a restaurant or making a personal appearance before thousands of fans, he cuts an impressive figure. Every now and then he’ll drop a breadcrumb, about his mentor Marco Pierre White, or working in Le Gavroche when he was 22, and the viewer is reminded that under all that big top bluster he is the real deal as a chef. 

Yet even after all he has achieved, he cannot take criticism. He retells the old story about kicking a critic and his guest, Joan Collins, out of his restaurant because of a bad review. He doesn’t name the writer, but it was the late AA Gill, and it was almost 30 years ago. “I know it was wrong,” he concedes now, but then adds: “That’s what happens when women like Joan Collins come to dinner with k********.”

For the truth he turns to Tana, who does a nice line in telling it like it is. “He drives me mental,” she says as her husband returns from another long trip abroad. When she discovers that Ramsay was plagued at school by Jilted John’s Gordon is a Moron, she asks if they’ve chosen the music for the opening titles yet. 

You won’t find anything here about a reported pre-wedding feud with their daughter’s in-laws or any other unpleasantness. “Tell me about the love you have for your kids,” is about as hardball as the questioning gets. 

For all his candour, Being Gordon Ramsay fails to nail what being Gordon Ramsay means. The film ends with him driving away from the launch party for Bishopsgate (a big success) and floating the idea of Manhattan as the place for his next venture. Flash Gordon, still hungry after all these years.