Gordon Ramsay Once Banned a Critic From His Restaurant

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Gordon Ramsay typifies what it means to be a chef, by which we mean he’s a perpetually angry perfectionist who is terrifyingly skilled with a knife. Though known as one of the most talented chefs in the world, he has a rather poor relationship with critics, mainly because he once had one ejected from his restaurant.

That critic was one, A. A. Gill, a restaurant reviewer for The Sunday Times and noted asshole who once shot a baboon in the face for no other reason than to see what it was like to kill something that looked human and openly admits that his opinion is worth more than other peoples’.

Prick
That scarf however is not.

Exactly what Gill did to draw the ire of Ramsay isn’t clear, however, given Gill’s reputation for being a smarmy dickhead and Ramsay’s temperament, it’s not exactly difficult to figure out that the two probably had a misunderstanding.

According to Ramsay, the beef between himself and Gill started when he heard that Gill had made insulting comments about his staff and personal life and he unsurprisingly had him thrown the hell out of his restaurant in the middle of his meal. Ramsay doubled down on his actions in an open editorial published a few days later, writing that he didn’t respect Gill’s opinion as a food critic and that he was under no obligation to cook for anyone, regardless of who they were, if they were insulting him or acting like a total dickbeard to his staff. Gill in turn called Ramsay “a terrific chef, but a terrible human being” and continued reviewing restaurants and insulting vast swathes of the population while eating fancy food for free.

While it was certainly undeniably noble of Ramsay to take this stand, it certainly comes across as a little hypocritical considering the chef himself has a fairly well-known and publicized record of being so mean to his staff they regularly break down in tears.

Which makes for great TV.
Which makes for great TV.

Although it’s true that shows like Hell’s Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares somewhat unfairly paint Chef Ramsay as a screaming maniac who is always one mistake away from exploding into an expletive filled and cruelly cutting rant about the nearest person to him’s ineptitude, he does have a reputation for being both a perfectionist and fucking insane and he has on at least one occasion launched into an angry tirade so ferociously terrifying, the staff member on the receiving end called the police to come help them.

So yeah, Gordon Ramsay, you earn major brownie points for telling that critic to eat a bag of fried dicks at another chef’s restaurant because you don’t want someone rude who insults your staff enjoying your food, but you also lose like 40 of them for being the guy who insults your staff 97% of the time.