This Is The Pasta Recipe Gordon Ramsay Is Accused Of Stealing

Mitch Orr is a celebrity chef in Sydney, Australia where he is known as the "Prince of Pasta" for his work at his former restaurant Acme. One of his signature dishes there was Macaroni, Pig's Head, Egg Yolk which The Straits Times says is inspired by the Filipino dish sisig or pig's head, which Orr ate during a trip to New York. Via Buro, the Aussie chef describes the dish as "[using] whole pigs heads, brought in every day, then brined and braised overnight in a master stock seasoned with soy sauce, sugar, vinegar, and tomato. We then pick all the soft tender meat from the head, including all the offal, chop it up and pan fry it until it's golden. A sauce made of chili, garlic, onion, some of the master stock, butter and lemon juice is then tossed with fresh macaroni made in-house and topped with a raw egg yolk." Orr didn't seem like someone who might cross swords with British celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay — until now. 

Orr took issue with Ramsey's recent Instagram post featuring a Vietnamese braised pork carbonara, to which Orr, remarking as "instakrill," commented "Looks familiar mate." Orr's comment, which got 119 likes, triggered comments like "you come at the king you best not miss" and "Not gonna lie your pasta looks beautiful and I'd probably rather eat yours than his, but I'm at a loss as to what the similarities are beyond a basic construction of pasta, meat, and whole egg yolk on top."

Mitch Orr knows that there really is no such thing as an original recipe, but he called out Gordon over an important omission. "People don't really own recipes but it is standard etiquette to give credit where credit is due, Gordon is one of the biggest chefs in the world with over 9 million followers on social media — the right thing to do is to credit where the inspiration for the dish came from," Orr tells Emerald City, per The Sydney Morning Herald. But Orr's not hanging on to his grievance, saying he had been in touch with fellow chef Michael Dabbs, who was tagged in Ramsey's original post. Sydney's Prince of Pasta says, "I haven't heard anything from Gordon himself, but I have been in contact with the chef he tagged who agreed the [pasta] was too similar not to have given me credit for."

Given the number of negative comments from Ramsay's Instagram followers about the dish, Orr might not have wanted to call dibs on what has become a controversy in and of itself. One of Ramsey's followers said: "Honestly I don't think vietnamese we cook like this." A more aggressive comment comes from a fellow fan who said "they need to f****** quit calling things vietnamese when its not," while a third who said "YOU SHOULD NOT CALL THAT CARBONARA... THAT'S AN OFFENCE FOR ITALIAN FOOD".