The timing could not have been worse. Rick Stein, the celebrated sea food chef, had just appeared intent on inspecting Gordon Ramsay's kitchen. Ramsay was present at the time, instructing his brigade of chefs like a NASA engineer at mission control. And I, Ramsay's new Commis Chef, was slicing pumpkins for the soup provided as an "amuse gueule," a pre-lunch aperitif, for all customers at "Gordon Ramsay" restaurant.
It is just three days since Ramsay received his third, prestigious, Michelin star, an accolade that places the Glaswegian born footballer-turned chef and his most sought-after eaterie way out in front, and on their own in London. "It's a massive accolade to be awarded three stars, and it's going to be just as tough to maintain the standards that people will now expect from us," Ramsay explained to me, during a moment's reflection. My presence was hardly going to aid his cause, then.
Now, at precisely the wrong moment, my knife slipped across the pumpkin skin and sliced a layer of skin off my right thumb. "Fuck, fuck, fuck," I shouted out in some discomfort, paraphrasing Hugh Grant in "Four Weddings," before wringing my hand and then observing, with horror, my blood pumping out of my thumb and splattering across a senior sous chef's top. From nowhere a cloth appeared, and then a bandage and within seconds the crisis had passed. The brigade of chefs had reacted in rapid fashion, something they have been trained to do amid the heat and tension of cooking for the most demanding chef and clients in the capital. An oblivious Ramsay and Stein continued to talk shop and a potentially disastrous moment for the kitchen, let alone me, had passed. Never mind my severely-cut thumb. I had just escaped being "Ramsayed."
"People will think you're frigging nuts to go and work there." It wasn't really the most comforting opinion I'd hoped for just days before beginning my stint at Gordon Ramsay's. I was expecting such a reaction from a public fed merely on the carefully edited, juicy cuts from various television documentaries and features in print, but not from Marcus Wareing, chef/patron with Ramsay of "Gordon Ramsay's" sister restaurant, "Petrus," in London. Ramsay acted as Wareing's best man last summer at his wedding, having tutored him over the best part of ten years in the art of cooking before presenting him with "Petrus" to run. Now, over coffee, the man who knows Ramsay best presented a portrait.
"I got a job at Le Gavroche under Michel Roux," he explained. "There was one guy in the kitchen that was different to all the others. He pissed around with the other chefs but then, during lunch and dinner, he transformed into the most talented chef I've ever known. He stood out like a bad smell, a man possessed with cooking, and obsessed with being a success." No prizes for guessing who Wareing is referring to.
"He's a perfectionist, and he makes others working for him perfectionists too. Believe me, you need to be thick-skinned because he can be the biggest bastard in whites, but he'll then pick you up off the floor, dust you down, and make you feel as if you're the best. The loyalty he gives to his chefs, and we, in return, show him, says it all."
My efforts at cooking Sunday lunch hardly enhanced my confidence, either. We had seven over for the meal, and although a roast is straightforward enough, I took it upon myself to attempt Ramsay's white chocolate and lemon mousse for dessert, with instructions taken directly from his book, "A Chef for all Seasons." The end product had lumps of white chocolate, next to no lemon flavour, and seven guests who remarked how nice it tasted before, to a person, leaving most in the bowl. Things were not looking good.
A chef's day is like no other. They live in the twilight zone. Reporting for work at 7.00 a.m, they finish their "day's work" at 1.00 a.m. the following morning. Well, at least they do at "Gordon Ramsay." Their weekend off consists of sleep, some more sleep, and a top-up of sleep. "They're shit hours," Ramsay would admit later. "And we've all got to go through it. There was many a time when I've stood beside Marco Pierre White close to tears and wondering what the hell am I doing this for. I've even slept standing up by a stove. But I wanted to be like Marco, and achieve what he had done. I hope my chefs feel the same way now about me."
They do. In fact, they have to. If the belief and the ambition was not there, then they should never have been released from the lunatic asylum in the first place. "It could be a murderous road to nowhere," is how one of the chefs phrased it as we worked together that first morning.
By then Mark Askew, "Gordon Ramsay's" executive chef, had bedded me in to the ways of the kitchen. Providing me with my hat and apron, Mark introduced me first to the brigade of sous chefs, chef de parties and commis chefs: Neil and "Sarge," Ade and "Rusty," Phil and "Hector," Paul, Richard, Josh, Chad and Cristona. Jean Claude and Dominique, the two managers at the front of house would later come over to say hello. And Ronan, the head Sommelier, would show me his cellar, and the bottle of wine that takes pride of place. "Petrus, 1947," he announced, with affection shining in his eyes. And the price? "It'll cost you ?12,300," Ronan replied, matter-of-factly. "I'd be sorry to see it go, actually." He'd be even more sorry to see it dropped.
Within a couple of hours I'd been ticked off for leaning on the surface - "looks sloppy and slobby" - for folding my arms - "looks like you're doing nothing" - and for having my hair flopping from inside my hat - "unhygienic." I had helped Mark hack off large lumps off beef from a pile of shins, and then attempted to make some tortellini stuffed with lobster meat and other ingredients. Out of ten only one of mine was deemed fit to cook. "There's your tortellino," Mark would inform me later, with a wide grin, as he pointed to one piece amid a pan of pasta fizzing away on the stove.
Gordon entered the fray mid-morning, and you soon know about it. "Have you cooked before?" he asked me, with a suspicious-looking expression, before reprimanding one of the chefs for walking around with a creme brulee in his hand. "We haven't got to the stage we're at to have people doing that," he admonished.
All morning the brigade beavered away, but come lunch-time the atmosphere changed from workmanlike to frenetic. I was in charge of making the amuse gueules - some oil, pumpkin soup, mushrooms or ceps, and a small piece of cheese - and delivering them to the service point, where Mark Askew would inspect before allowing all food to be served. It is, as Ramsay put it later that day, the food equivalent of air traffic control. The chefs prepare, cook and deliver with precision timing like the "Red Arrows," working at high speed and avoiding potentially disastrous collisions by inches. They have a way, too, of doing this.
When Mark shouts out an order, he does it only once. "Oui," the chefs reply. All understand exactly what is asked of them. "Two minutes," Ade, on the meat section, would announce, informing his colleagues of when exactly the trimmings and sauces should be completed in readiness for the meat. "Backs," we would all shout, when we came through with a tray or a plate of food. Sometimes "backs behind" was uttered as well. This ensured that others were made fully aware of our movements. "I noticed that at one stage you were opening the door to the hot plate completely unaware of all the food being served directly above your head," Gordon admitted later. "That comes with experience, and training. If a tray is dropped, then the shit really hits the fan."
I can believe it, too. There were 35 covers for that first lunch, including Rick Stein, all squeezed into a little more than a two hour period that created, back stage in the kitchen, organised chaos. And as soon as the rush dies down, the build up to dinner begins.
It was during this preparation post-lunch that I attempted to make the kitchen resemble the scene of a Jack the Ripper murder. Funnily enough, my injury provoked approval from all and sundry. "Le metier qui rante," said Dominique, the restaurant manager, when he heard about my misfortune. "The profession comes through you," he added, by way of translation. It's our saying here." Neil, having mopped himself up, recalled his first week in the kitchen. "You think it's bad cutting your thumb," he said. "I only went and cut Gordon's finger." When Ramsay caught sight of my bandaged thumb, a flurry of questions followed. "Is it deep? Did it hurt? Is it the first time?," was followed by a nod of his head and a smile. "Welcome to the brigade," he said. "Now it's official."
Dinner for sixty-six proved to be equally as hectic. As well as the amuses gueules my main contribution that evening was to prepare the canapes for each and every guest, although there were times when all hands on deck were required, hence my questionable help in the pastry section, answering the kitchen telephone, or presenting the dishes for the waiters to serve. By the time the kitchen had been scrubbed the clock on the wall read 1.00 a.m. I would return in less than six hours' time to begin a further day's work.
"Seems like you shut your eyes and opened them again immediately, doesn't it?" Paul, one of the commis chefs commented, when he saw my bleary eyes. A heat rash had also appeared on my face from the hours spent in the close proximity of the stove, and my feet, from eighteen hours of standing on them the previous day without a single rest, were killing me.
"I tell the guys they've got it easy," Mark Askew said, in a moment's quiet before the first storm of the day. "They look at me as if I'm a dickhead. But at "Aubergine," where I worked under Gordon before, we had a five and half day week. The "half" was from 2.00 p.m. to 1.00 a.m. on Saturdays."
Mark seemed a reasonable, intelligent, friendly kind of guy. I felt a sudden, and emotional urge brought on by fatigue to ask him a question. "For Christ's sake, man, why do you do it?"
"I figured out if I did eighteen hours a day I'd condense four years into two," he replied. "It's been a massive commitment, but it's been worth it. I wanted to do my best. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. When you work with Gordon only the very best will do. That's why the demand for standards is so high. We make a big deal over what may appear to be a minor mistake. By doing so we make sure it doesn't happen again, and that our level is at 100%, and nothing less. If you give everything to Gordon, he'll give it back."
That morning I had been asked to cook the brigade lunch. Gordon had insisted he would be my judge and jury, which was akin to taking Michael Schumacher out for a spin in the car. "Make sure it's nice," he warned me. "The waiters have to eat it, and if they don't like there'll be all hell to pay." Josh volunteered to be my soup consultant. I decided to make a soup out of all the scraps available. Over the course of a couple of hours I laboured over a large vat, throwing in finely chopped carrots and asparagus spears, cabbage and cauliflower, potato and beans, leeks, mushrooms and pumpkin, all blended in with ham stock. At precisely eleven o'clock lunch was served.
"What is it, then?" Gordon asked, as he poured some into a small, soup bowl.
"I'm calling it "Potage du legumes scrap," I replied. "Basically, it's a joyous marriage of vegetables, a mixture of opposites, a combination of contrasting characters. It's a deep, resonant, winter soup." Most of the chefs stifled their laughter at this point. Then a miracle happened. Ramsay tasted it and nodded his head with approval. "Not bad," he announced. "Not bad at all. Needs more salt, but then again I do have a very fine palate. I'll give it eight out of ten."
I asked him if he'd consider serving it at his restaurant. "I didn't say it was that good," he replied. Maybe in his next book, then? "When I say eight out of ten, that's a decent mark for food I'd be prepared to let the staff have. But there's no bloody way I'd let anyone else have it, or read it!"
After a lunch that passed by smoothly enough, save for an angry outburst from Ramsay concerning the use of frozen langoustines instead of fresh ones, we sat down and talked more. I had already decided that the Gordon Ramsay in the flesh does not quite live up to his sometimes aggressive and abusive public image, and half an hour later I was convinced that what we have here is a relieved and contented man who has just completed a very personal mission. "For the first time in my whole life I feel that I've achieved something," he admitted.
Ironically, the ingredients of his three Michelin stars were thrown together fourteen years' ago in the most unlikely of places. "Like any Scottish footballer I wanted to play at Hampden Park and win the cup," he explained. "I remember once playing in a game for Rangers over at East Kilbride. At half time Jock Wallace, the manager, and Archie Knox, the coach, absolutely screwed me. I was told in no uncertain terms that I had fifteen minutes to sort my game out, otherwise I'd never wear the club blazer again, and wouldn't be allowed to go near first team training for six months.
"It wasn't long after that, when I was nineteen, that I was shown the door after a knee injury. I had the chance to play elsewhere, at lesser clubs, but to me I had already failed. It's funny, but when I was told the other day that I'd received the third star, my immediate thoughts turned to the day I was forced out of football. So you must understand, the three stars has finally filled that hole. It means everything to me. I didn't succeed at first in what I set out to do in life. But now, after a long and at times torturous journey, I have."
He dislikes the image that the media has conveyed of him. Much of this stemmed from the television documentaries, "Boiling Point" and "Beyond Boiling Point," where he was seen to tear into his brigade on a regular basis. "I get really pissed off when I get negative feedback off Tana, my wife, from other mothers," he continued. "She tells them I'm nicer when you get to know me. The year when the documentary was made was shit. I'd left Aubergine to go it alone and put everything I had into this restaurant, I had the resulting litigation, and my Dad died. It's taught me not to carry passengers. You don't go to work carrying dead wood. I'm completely different outside the kitchen. I love my family and I'd go through a brick wall for them, but when I'm working I have a duty to my customers. The moment you question their integrity, the moment you decide that they'll never know of you've put 95% effort into their order, is the moment when your life-span becomes very short."
At dinner I was allowed for a short period of time to shout out the orders. "Let's see if you've gained the chefs' respect," Mark Askew said. They responded with a smirking "oui." From 6.30 until 12.30 I made hundreds of canapes, and hundreds more amuses gueules, shouting "backs" every other minute as I transported trays across the kitchen. My feet had turned numb by the early hours, my face was sore from the heat, and my eyelids were heavy. Two days of living life as a commis chef at "Gordon Ramsay," and a man who is supposedly fit had been transformed into a physical and mental wreck.
"You settled in better today," Gordon said, when it was all, finally, over. "You didn't understand the etiquette of the kitchen yesterday. You can't talk, you can't talk loudly, and everyone can't become your best mate. After last plates are served I don't give a fig if everyone walks into the kitchen stark naked, but whilst the stove's on it's time to focus. Today you were more on your toes, more aware. And I admire you for jumping in at the deep end with us."
In that case, I wondered, would he be prepared to take me on as a chef, to nurture me, to include me on a permanent basis as a member of his celebrated brigade, and to eventually present me with my own restaurant?
Gordon Ramsay shook his head and laughed. "I'd have to have a look at you for a week before making that kind of a decision," he said. "At least a week. I wouldn't allow your hopes to get too high, not if I were you."
As I walked out into the darkness I left behind also the twilight zone of Gordon's brigade. None of us inside the Gordon Ramsay kitchen would have known if a hydrogen bomb had been dropped on London. We were too busy ensuring that the standards of a Michelin three star restaurant were maintained.
For all the hardship, the long hours, the tiredness, the aching feet and the sore face, I missed working with the brigade the following morning, with Gordon Ramsay at the wheel, steering through the waves and the storms like a man obsessed on finding a treasure island. In fact, I was thinking about it all so much I managed to burn my toast.
At "Gordon Ramsay" that might have resulted in abuse. At "Ian Stafford" the charred toast was dumped in the bin. Not much chance of my place acquiring any Michelin stars, then.
