Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
FEUDS GLORIOUS FEUDS!
Talk about boiling over. Some of TV’s hottest chefs have revealed just how bitter their spats with each other have been over the years
The kitchen can be dramatic, what with the heat, slow simmer ing and potential for things to boil over. But never mind the recipes, what about the chefs? Over the years, the biggest egos in the business have knifed each other in the back – metaphorically. The feuds, fall- outs and bad-boy behaviour (it is generally the male chefs) have long been a theme of Weekend’s interviews with them.
The phenomenon reached its nadir in 2011, with Marcus Wareing, a judge on MasterChef: The Professionals, revealing how his feud with Gordon Ramsay, best known for TV show Hell’s Kitchen and who was Marcus’s best man in happier days, had begun when he worked under Gordon at Aubergine in London where Gordon was head chef. ‘Gordon verbally kicked the s*** out of you,’ said Marcus. ‘Then he would buy you a beer. He put me through mental torture. I’d be first in in the morning, and I’d lock up at night. All day, there’d be Gordon being Gordon. It’s a wonder we all survived.’ Had he and Ramsay ever indulged in fisticuffs during their subsequent battle over the Ramsay-owned but Wareingrun restaurant Petrus? ‘No, I never hit him,’ Marcus said, after he’d had a think. ‘He was a big, strong lad. You’d have to knock him out – otherwise he’d come back and swallow you.’
They came close to actual blows, though. ‘Bloody close. Once, about six months before we finished, he came into the kitchen on a Saturday night. We had a conversation. Things got so heavy that we had to go outside. We were having this ding-dong when the doors opened and this bride and groom were stood there. She shrieked, “Oh my God, it’s Gordon Ramsay!” Little did she know we’d been at each other’s throats a moment before. That would have been a nice one for the album.’
That feud was one of many between chefs who once had a mentor-mentee relationship. King of the ding- dong was Marco Pierre White, who reduced Gordon Ramsay to tears when Gordon worked for him at Harveys in London. Their feud ebbed and flowed over the years, with Ramsay saying Marco is the living person he dislikes the most.
The feeling was mutual. Marco finished one Weekend interview by offering to sign a now-infamous magazine cover of him holding a platter on which was displayed Gordon’s head. ‘Everything Gordon does is contrived, unnatural, derivative,’ he claimed in 2009. ‘I said once that if Gordon were made of chocolate he would eat himself.’
But in 2015, Marco suggested this feud – worsened when Gordon brought a camera crew to Marco’s wedding without permission – was over. ‘I never fell out with him. His camera crew hid in the bushes. I knew nothing about it till I saw it on his documentary Beyond Boiling Point, and I thought, “I don’t want him as part of my life.” But I bumped into him on a flight recently and we had a good six hours in the plane bar.’
Marco’s hate list is long. Among his enemies is Jamie Oliver, who called Marco a ‘psychological bully’. He riposted by dismissing Jamie as ‘a fat chef with a drum kit’. Back in 2009 he told us, ‘I don’t know Jamie, but I look forward to him saying those words to my face. If he doesn’t, it will highlight how weak a person can be.’ Would he ever visit one of Jamie’s restaurants, we wondered? ‘No. There are only so many hours in the day. When he gets his first Michelin star take him seriously.’
In 2007, Marco claimed shouting made him a good boss. ‘Most chefs begin to shout at about 8.30pm because the dinner service isn’t going well. That highlights that the boss has lost control. But if you shout from the start of service, like I do, you retain control rather than lose it.’
Shouting was de rigueur in all his relationships – not least with estranged wife Mati. ‘I like to be with people who shout at me. I’ve been shouted at all my life. If it wasn’t my father, it was head chefs. If it wasn’t them, it was Mati. I’d be lost without it.’
But Raymond Blanc had no time for histrionics, he told us in 2006. ‘Creativity thrives in an atmosphere that is not threatening,’ he said. ‘Gordon is a great chef, but you don’t need that macho atmosphere in the kitchen. TV likes to shock, but are we a nation of voyeurs who find humiliation enjoyable? Who would send their child to train in an environment like Hell’s Kitchen? The kitchen will always be a tough place but that behaviour belongs to the dinosaurs.’
When cookery doyenne Prue Leith dared speak out about the way Marco and Gordon run their kitchens, she got both
barrels from Marco. ‘If she wants to show a class how to make an avocado fan with a raspberry coulis, then good luck to her. I’ve never taken her seriously as a chef,’ he told us. Ouch.
Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay’s rivalry – from the size of their empires to the size of their families – turned surreal in 2008 when Gordon took Jamie to task for swearing on his Ministry Of Food series. Yes, really. ‘Maybe if you’re delivering babies and it’s going t**s up, you might swear. But not teaching someone to make a f****** Cornish pasty.’ Er? ‘I know, I know. Who am I to say that? But Jamie should know better, he’s the domestic darling of the blue-rinse brigade.’
Gordon also spoke movingly about his wife Tana’s father Chris Hutcheson. ‘He hated me at first. Tana was going out with my friend Tim, and she and her dad came to eat in Aubergine. I was lording it up. I said to Tim, “I’m a 25 per cent shareholder. I’ve arrived, mate.” Chris turned to Tim, saying, “Who was that arrogant a***?” It’s hard to believe Chris is my CEO now.’
Chris became a role model to Gordon, whose own father was absent. ‘It’s never too late to have a true father figure,’ he confided. Alas, that relationship ended up in court – with Tana estranged from her parents. Gordon paid Chris a £2 million settlement and severed all professional links.
In 2016, in a joint interview with his daughter Tilly, he reflected on the turn of events. ‘I wanted to say, “Cut the c***. How much money do you want to go?” But he fought through the courts. I trusted him,’ he said. ‘Tilly looked up to Grandad and it’s hard for her to see him in a new light… and for Tana’s parents to shut her out. It’s been very difficult for her. Nothing would make me fall out with my daughters.’
‘Jamie Oliver should know better than to swear’ GORDON RAMSAY