After chopping 500 of his staff – Ramsay cooks up noodle empire

NOBODy snapped into action faster than Gordon Ramsay following the introduction of lockdown. No sooner had it been implemented than the expletive-addicted chef brought 500 of his staff to boilingpoint by pulping their contracts.

So I’m intrigued by Ramsay’s latest ploy. He has, I can disclose, hatched secret plans to start a new group of restaurants, discreetly registering an outfit called The Humble Noodle Group at Companies House, and applying to trademark the name ‘the Noodle Lounge, by Gordon Ramsay’.

The Renfrewshire-born chef, acclaimed for the culinary craft which brought him three Michelin stars by the time he was 33, is listed as one of two directors of the embryonic company whose name echoes the title of his autobiography — Humble Pie.

Ramsay is keeping his chopsticks close to his chest. ‘There is no comment on this,’ Jo Milloy, who handles the affairs of the family empire, tells me.

This sudden coyness is at odds with Ramsay’s recent assessment of the hospitality industry, which, according to some, will see 30,000 pubs and restaurants close for ever in the coming months. This gruesome prospect gets Ramsay’s juices going.

‘I think it’s exciting times because it’s flushed away the unwanted,’ he observed, arguing that ‘the good are going to survive, the below average are going to fall to the wayside’.

The key to survival in these circumstances, added Ramsay, 53, ‘is not about making money’ but about ‘giving your staff and your customers confidence that you’re backing them’. But foodie Rose Prince, author of Dinner & Party, wonders if Ramsay’s fledgling enterprise is a wok too far — even for him. ‘Any acclaimed chef who is planning to roll out a restaurant has to remember what happened to Jamie Oliver’s group,’ she tells me.

‘Its collapse was hugely embarrassing. Gordon Ramsay could end up as humble as his noodles.’

The occasionally overheated chef cannot, surely, have forgotten a difficult episode of his Channel 4 TV series, Cookalong. Irked by a crowd gawping at him at the Noodle Inn in London’s Oxford Street, he hurled a noodle handful against the restaurant window.