Sometimes you gotta wonder what the problem is with Gordon Ramsay. Does he open his mouth and spew out stuff and then think about it? Does he do things knowing he’s going to look like an idiot afterwards? Even if his own house were in order and if he indeed really did mean things from the heart, just who does he think he is to try and get legislative fines introduced for anything?

Yes, Gordon Ramsay shot his mouth off on Friday and now, with the weekend having passed and critics having gathered, they’re firing back. Looking at things as they are at the moment, Ramsay has managed to anger every United Kingdom cook and chef who wasn’t already annoyed by him.

You see, his general message was rather well-intended. Um, we think. From Friday’s Telegraph, Ramsay was saying that

the industry [is] at risk of “spiralling out of control” as food is flown into the UK from all over the world. Ramsay, whose restaurants include Maze, Petrus and Foxtrot Oscar, said chefs should be confident enough to remove a dish from the menu if the right ingredients were not available.

He said: “Chefs should be fined if they haven’t got ingredients in season on their menu.” “I don’t want to see asparagus in the middle of December, I don’t want to see strawberries from Kenya in the middle of March. I want to see it home grown.

This is where a decent thought turned into draconian craziness though:

There should be stringent laws, fines and licensing laws to make sure produce is only used in season. If we get this legislation pushed through the Houses of Parliament then the more unique this country will become.”

Ramsay said he had spoken to the Prime Minister Gordon Brown briefly about the issue and warned that buying food from abroad made cooks lazy. “If we don’t restrict our movements within this industry of seasonal produce only, then the whole thing will spiral out of control,” he told the BBC.

It didn’t take long for the country’s cooks and chefs and media to retaliate. From Saturday’s Telegragh came:

But Ramsay was accused of hypocrisy after it emerged that more than 15 unseasonal ingredients – including blackberries, parsnips and fennel – are currently being served at his own restaurants and would fall foul of a fine. [....]

Anthony Worrall Thompson, a television chef, was also circumspect: “I trawled through his menus from Claridges and Maze and there were at least 15 items that would have warranted a fine,” he said. “The principle is right but as for fining, I think it is a bit of a nonsense – he likes to keep in the limelight.”

It’s the Guardian’s comments section that Interneters are having the most fun pointing our Ramsay’s own restaurant flaws though:

Poster benbush wrote: “Leaving aside steak flown in from Japan and the USA (bring it on), the raspberries in the quail salad are maybe a little early? And which red fruits are in the Eton mess exactly. Presumably Padron peppers wouldn’t be shipped in from Padron would they? And all those apples they’re using must have been keeping well … What a chump.”

HowardV followed up with: “I heard the story on the radio this morning and immediately thought, ‘Oh no, Gordon again.’”

{12 May 2008}