People Who Can't Stand Gordon Ramsay

There's no doubt that Gordon Ramsay is one of the biggest names in the restaurant business. He's an international sensation whose cooking chops (he has multiple Michelin stars under his belt) have made him a household name. He's starred on several TV shows, and has restaurants all over the globe. He enjoys considerable success, but fame has a way of bringing on the haters, and Ramsay has a lot of them.

What is it about Ramsay that makes him so reviled? In some cases, his many feuds can probably be chalked up to professional jealousy, but it definitely goes further than that. Many people simply can't stand his personality, while others have found themselves as the target of one of Ramsay's cruel comments. For one reason or another, there are a lot of people who hold a grudge against the millionaire chef. Here are some of the people who can't stand Gordon Ramsay.

The late chef, Anthony Bourdain, was often pretty critical of Ramsay, but his beef with the chef was not entirely personal. Back in 2012, he expressed his disdain for him when Ramsay applied to trademark the name The Spotted Pig in the UK. Ramsay had no immediate plans to use the name, but the trademark would have effectively stopped April Bloomfield and Ken Friedman, of New York's The Spotted Pig, from branching out across the pond.

Bourdain took to Twitter to call Ramsay's move "shameful pathetic" and "despicable." He accused Ramsay of appropriating the brand built up by Bloomfield. Ramsay, however, claimed that he had no harmful intentions, calling the trademark an "innocent mistake." He eventually turned the trademark back over to Bloomfield, but not until few months had passed. Whether Ramsay really was trying to do the right thing or he was just caving in to the criticism is uncertain.

Mario Batali's brash personality clashes with Ramsay's, probably because the two celeb chefs are so much alike. The feud between them has been going on for years. After Batali said that Ramsay's cooking is "dull and outdated," Ramsay shot back, mocking Batali's orange shorts. "Now he goes about town calling me Fanta Pants," Batali told The Guardian in 2009. Batali escalated the feud even further by banning his rival from all of his restaurants. "Ramsay's people call trying to book tables and I say no," he said. "I won't have him in there."  

Batali did say that he'd be happy to lay the feud to rest. "If he called me himself and said, 'Let's sit down for a drink', I'm sure it would be fine. We'd be cool. But right now it's not cool."

While the two still aren't exactly friends, Batali has hypothesized that Ramsay is "just playing a role," telling Eric Ripert on his show, On the Table "He's a TV guy. He's like playing the bad guy in Macbeth. That's just the role he's got. I don't think he's like that honestly."

If Marcus Samuelsson's memoir, Yes, Chef, is to be believed, he has a better reason than some to hate Gordon Ramsay. According to his memoir (via Eater), Samuelsson's dislike for Ramsay goes way back. He said that he first noticed Ramsay's less-than-stellar personality when cooking with him at a promotional event. "There were a handful of chefs there... and Gordon was rude and obnoxious to all of them," he said.

A couple years later, when he landed a job at London's Lanesborough, Samuelsson was asked which British chefs he admired, a list that Ramsay didn't make. "I thought the best way to handle it was to saying nothing about him at all," wrote Samuelsson. "Nothing good, nothing bad. I guess he was offended at being left out."

Ramsay allegedly called Samuelsson, saying "How the f*** can you come to my f***ing city and think you are going to be able to cook without even f***ing referring to me?" Samuelsson said that the tirade went on for several minutes, and ended with Ramsay saying "I'm going to make sure you have a f***ing miserable time here. This is my city, you hear? Good luck, you f***ing black bastard."

Ramsay has so many haters that you could sort them into categories of those who casually dislike him and those who take their feuds with him very seriously. Chef Jamie Oliver falls into the second category, and has had an ongoing feud with Ramsay for years. The fight began in the 2000s when Oliver publicly bashed Ramsay for mocking the appearance of Tracy Grimshaw, an Australian TV personality. Ramsay retaliated by calling Oliver a "one pot wonder" and their feud was born.

Oliver has even brought Ramsay's wife, Tana, into the battle, saying that she is a better cook than her more-famous husband. The breaking point came in 2017, after Oliver talked about having one more child than the Ramsays. Ramsay's wife had suffered a miscarriage earlier that year, and he said he would never speak to Oliver again unless the chef apologized. "Boys will always fight and butt heads but Tana was mortified, I mean really mortified," Ramsay told Radio Times.

Part of the reason Gordon Ramsay alienates people is because he has a tendency to take things personally. In the 1990s, Ramsay's restaurant, Aubergine, received good reviews from critics, but failed to win over the late AA Gill. The critic gave Aubergine a negative review in the Sunday Times. Instead of taking the criticism gracefully, Ramsay instead retaliated against Gill years later by kicking him out of another one of his restaurants. Ramsay wrote in The Independent that he doesn't have a problem with constructive criticism, "but if it becomes personal I'll close my doors to that." He said he kicked Gill out because he doesn't "respect him as a food critic." Ramsay wrote, "Personal attacks and insulting my staff is something I'm not putting up with... I don't have to stand there and cook for him."

Gill responded by saying that, while he respects Ramsay's cooking skills, he is "just a really second-rate human being."

Ramsay's former business partner, Danny Lavy, ended up on Ramsay's hit list after ending their partnership because of Ramsay not pulling his weight. Their venture, Laurier Gordon Ramsay, lasted only six months before Lavy ended Ramsay's consulting contract. "We wish Gordon all the best, but he's a big star and too busy to come to the restaurant," Lavy told National Post in February, 2012. "He didn't have the time to manage it. He hasn't been here since August."

Lavy removed Ramsay's name from the restaurant, changing the name to Laurier 1936 (the year that the restaurant first opened). New menus were quickly printed up, leaving few traces that Ramsay had ever been involved at all. Restaurant critic Marie-Claude Lortie told The Globe and Mail that while "Ramsay created a buzz" around the restaurant and "gave it a jolt," his influence didn't make much of a difference in the restaurant.

In response, Ramsay took Lavy to court for the $2.25 million he says he lost in the deal. Laurier 1936 has since closed. 

Marco Pierre White was Gordon Ramsay's mentor for a time, but things ended badly. White bragged in his autobiography (via the Independent) that he had made Ramsay cry when he was in his early 20s after yelling at him. While it's understandable that Ramsay hates his former boss, White also detests Ramsay for the things he has done to retaliate for the harsh treatment.

"I will never speak to him again," White told Telegraph. "I gave him his first break in the business and I believe strongly in being loyal to people who have helped you." White claimed that Ramsay betrayed him in several ways, including turning up at his wedding without permission with a film crew and posting footage of it.

In 1998, Ramsay paid someone to steal his restaurant's reservation book. He claimed that White was behind the theft and was trying to sabotage his business. "I blamed Marco," Ramsay finally admitted to The Guardian nearly a decade after the incident. "Because I knew that would f**k him."

Gordon Ramsay doesn't exempt his family from his feuds. His fight with his father-in-law, Chris Hutcheson, got so out of control that it ended with Hutcheson ultimately  going to jail. Hutcheson and Ramsay worked together for a time, but after Ramsay fired him as his business partner, Hutcheson and his sons, Adam and Chris, hacked into the company computer to steal data. Instead of settling the matter privately, Ramsay brought the feud public and the Hutchesons were arrested. Hutcheson was sentenced to six months in prison.

The two patched things up after Hutcheson was released. "He did some stupid mistakes that he's put his hand up and accepted and I'd like to think that we've all moved on," Ramsay told The Herald. Ramsay added that the incident was very difficult on his family, but that his father-in-law apologized to everyone and they had put it all behind them.

While Ramsay's kids haven't publicly said anything too bad about their famous dad, it's probably only a matter of time. Ramsay is notorious for saying that he won't leave his vast fortune to his children, because he doesn't want them to be spoiled. The multimillionaire takes it a little bit too far, though. When the family goes on trips, he doesn't even let his kids sit with him and his wife, Tara. "They haven't worked anywhere near hard enough to afford that," he told Telegraph. "I turn left with Tana and they turn right and I say to the chief stewardess, 'Make sure those little f****** don't come anywhere near us, I want to sleep on this plane'."

Teaching your kids the value of a dollar is one thing, but going on record saying you don't want your kids anywhere near you on a plane is a good way of stirring up resentment. His daughter, Tilly, has started to follow in her dad's footsteps, but has found that he's a harsh critic, even with his kids. On This Morning, she said, 'He's a really fussy eater... Well, with my food. He's really tough on me. He definitely is.'

One of the things other chefs really hate about Ramsay is the way he yells at other people on TV. Chef Eric Ripert, who is a practicing Buddhist, would like to see Ramsay be a little more Zen. "Nothing personal against Gordon Ramsay but he is a poor inspiration for professional chefs in his shows," wrote Ripert in a now-deleted Tweet shared by Eater. Ripert went on to blast Ramsay for insulting people, although he did say that he believes "in the goodness of Gordon."

Ripert's kitchen philosophy is a sharp contrast from Ramsay's. Ripert believes that a "smart chef" should lead their kitchen team "by sharing, teaching, [and] inspiring with respect" instead of "insulting, abusing, [and] humiliating their team," as he claims Ramsay does. In an interview with ABC News, Ripert went even further, saying that shows where chefs yell at their team shouldn't even be on TV. "We shouldn't be proud of chefs who are screaming in the kitchen," he said.

Jacques Pepin is another chef who thinks that Gordon Ramsay's on-screen persona leaves a lot to be desired. In a scathing piece for The Daily Meal, Pepin wrote about how reality TV shows portray the industry "in a chaotic and negative light."

"The so-called "reality" cooking shows are, if anything, totally unreal," wrote Pepin. "A real, well-run professional kitchen has dignity and order." He called out Hell's Kitchen, saying that "the cruel rivalry and conflict" on the show might bring in audiences, "but it is unjust to dedicated cooks and unfair to the trade."

It seems like he's calling out Ramsay in the piece, especially when he refers to reality TV stars on cooking shows who "insult and humiliate their crew, cursing and swearing, with every other word a bleeped expletive." Pepin later wrote on Facebook that he did not mean to insult Ramsay, who he called "a very good, professionally trained chef." Instead, he blamed the television industry for the pressure it puts on its celeb chefs to "create excitement."