Its not about where you come from, Its about who you are

For the uninitiated Gordon Ramsay is a celebrity michelin star chef known for his hilarious insults and rants. He has built a restaurant empire with multiple Michelin stars and is featured in hit television series like Masterchef and Hell’s kitchen. Gordon comes from very humble beginnings, living in a low-income housing project he and his family of 6 stayed in a tiny single-bedroom apartment. His parents went through a divorce during his childhood. So engrossed himeself in football as an escape mechanism, playing as a left-back for Oxford United. He was spotted by a Rangers scout and almost made it to professional level but his career was cut short due to a horrific knee injury. With his footaball career in tatters, he decided to pursue a career in cooking to escape the hurt and disappointment.

Maintaining Standards

Its not enough to have a a good restaurant concept or philosophy of cooking, every single one of dishes has to be executed to perfection all the time. The long term reputation of a restaurant is built on its service history. To achieve this level of consistency and quality a restaurant has to put in place a strict set of standards. The same dish has to be executed again and again night after night for months even years.

Service is King, Ideas vs Execution

Simplicity can be beautiful too because it allows us to streamline execution , improve the chances of adhering to standards and create a consistent product. A simple dish or a complex dish both are judged by critics not based on their complexity but rather on their taste and how well the ingredients are used, enhanced and combined.

Taste Taste Taste

Throughout the many TV series hosted by Ramsay, a key thing he highlights is his disdain for chefs who do not taste their dishes while cooking. Continuous tasting is a sign of a good chef. Tasting individual components of the dish to see whether they achieve their desired purpose, then tasting the flavor combinations as per the design of the dish and lastly tasting the dish as a whole to check that all the components work in harmony. Tasting is a way to ensure the consistency of the product. It removes inherent uncertainty in the quality of ingredients, hidden flaws, or just random mistakes that that creep in while doing repetetive tasks.

Less is More

A Michelin star dish doesn’t have to be complicated with tons of different components. It does not have to be piled high with tons of food. It could be made with as little as three ingredients but still showcase the freshness and quality of the produce used. The additional components must serve a purpose whether it be visual appeal or elevating the flavor of the star ingredient. Despise redundant components. Editing and refining is what sets a apart the best dishes from the rest.

Calling out Bullshit

In the kitchen, you have a level of expectancy, you know who you work for and you know what he expects of you. But if you always ensure that the product you are delivering is what he wants, you’ll be in his good graces forever

— Maria Tampakis

Often Gordon’s controversial commentary comes from a place of brutal honesty and a desire to do things right. In one of his flagship TV shows (Kitchen Nightmares) Gordon goes around the country visiting restaurants. He tastes the food, observes the service, checks all the kitchen freezers, and assesses overall what has gone wrong at that place. He then goes on to give the owners & chefs a reality check.

Understanding People

On Hell’s Kitchen Gordon is looking for a head chef for his new restaurant, the contestants are professional chefs, sous chefs, or even executive chefs at other establishments. This means that he expects a certain level of competency from them. When someone puts up raw meat or overcooks a piece of fish, over-season food, or on occasion even burns things, he goes berserk and berates them in front of everyone.

On MasterChef, he takes on a different role. The contestants here are amateur cooks and so he takes a measured approach. He mentors people, demonstrates different cooking techniques and cuisines, and even motivates and inspires people. One of these moments occurs on the third season of MasterChef US where a blind contestant Christine Ha cooks an apple pie for the first time and is unsure how the dish has turned out. To demonstrate how well the pie was cooked he scrapes the back of a knife across the top of the pie which makes a noise to show the pastry on top was crispy, well cooked, and not soggy.

Lastly, on MasterChef Kids, You see a completely different avatar of Gordon. Since contestants are often ten years old, He uses fun activities and costumes, acting as a goofball to keep them engaged while also taking many occasions to teach them and inculcate a passion for learning. When a kid panics or messes up he steps in taking over while calming them down and lifting them back up so that can finish the challenge.

Understanding what makes people tick is essential to success in any industry. It’s not black and white always — Partitioning the workforce into zeros and ones doesn’t necessarily work in real life. We need to figure out what each person needs, wants and set up the right incentives to help them grow.