Gordon Ramsay has built a reputation for his creative insults and blunt approach when it comes to judging chefs and restaurant owners across his multiple TV shows.
For five years, he even hosted a cooking show titled The F Word.
The British celebrity chef has been awarded 17 Michelin stars across his restaurants, so he’s got a thing or two to teach anyone who wants to succeed in the industry.
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However, not everyone is a fan of his use of profanity and strict personality. A woman whose restaurant was featured on Kitchen Nightmares recalled working with Ramsay and calling him out for the way he spoke to her workers.
In 2005, viewers got a behind-the-scenes look at Momma Cherri’s Soul Food Shack, a restaurant in Brighton, England.
The owner, Charita Jones, recently told CasinoHawks that Channel Four contacted her, saying they were looking for restaurants that had been open for less than five years to partake in a new project with Ramsay.
Image credits: mommacherri_official
A few weeks after she agreed to be featured on the show, she got a call informing her that Ramsay would arrive in 30 minutes.
“No warning,” Jones recalled. “I literally just took my coat off, dropped everything down, and next thing I know there was a knock at the door.”
Before she knew it, the camera was rolling.
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Jones said the celebrity chef was “very nice,” but that she made it clear early on that she and all workers would be treated as Ramsay’s equals.
“At the very beginning, when we were upstairs in the kitchen, and I think the first time he dropped the F-b*mb word to one of my chefs, I looked at him and I said, ‘Gordon, do you talk like that to your mama?’ And he said, ‘No, Mama.’
“I said, ‘There you go. I don’t expect to hear that language.'”
Image credits: Kitchen Nightmares
“I don’t mind it when it’s talking around someone’s actions, but swearing directly at someone I didn’t like. I then treated him like my little brother. We’re equal.”
The restaurateur added, “When it came to my waitresses and my staff, I wasn’t having it because my thing is, and I did say to Gordon, ‘I have so much respect for you. I expect the same.’ And that was it.”
Jones admitted that the team was “scared of him at first” but eventually “every last one of them fell in love” with Ramsay.
Image credits: Kitchen Nightmares
After her episode aired, Jones’ answering machine immediately crashed, as “everyone in the UK was trying to make a booking,” she said.
In just 20 minutes, Momma Cherri’s Soul Food Shack was fully booked for six months.
“I had to turn a lot of people away, I think a minimum of 80 people for a couple of weeks.”
Image credits: Kitchen Nightmares
Unfortunately, the restaurant closed in 2009 following the stock market crash.
Jones now runs a YouTube Channel, Momma Cherri, where she shares her soul food recipes with over 200,000 subscribers.
Kitchen Nightmares was first broadcast in the UK in 2004. In each episode, Ramsay visited a failing restaurant and acted as a troubleshooter to help improve it in just one week.
Image credits: Kitchen Nightmares
Jones further revealed that there were no retakes in Kitchen Nightmares. The show exposed each restaurant’s true weaknesses and did not sugarcoat the struggles of their owners.
“Every single thing you saw was real, even to the point when he sat us down when we realized that part of the problem we had was the finance side of it. That was the biggest problem,” the content creator said.
“That conversation we had with Gordon was real and the emotions were real.”
Image credits: Kitchen Nightmares
The Hell’s Kitchen star recently gave fans a peek into his personal life in his Netflix docuseries, Being Gordon Ramsay.
“I wanted to show the other side, the other half of me, and I don’t think that’s been done properly,” the father of six explained. “Not many people have seen me in my pajamas.”
In the series, he discusses his family life and difficult relationship with his late father, Gordon James Sr., which he described as “torrid.”
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The six-part documentary also follows the celebrity chef as he launches five culinary experiences at 22 Bishopsgate, one of London’s tallest buildings.
Ramsay continues to help, and shows some “tough love” to restaurant owners on TV. Last year, he launched Gordon Ramsay’s Secret Service, which follows him as he transforms different establishments while covertly observing their operations.
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