Gordon Ramsay’s Playing with Fire. Gordon Ramsay

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СКАЧАТЬ the idea of them being ‘fucking’ boiled. I think what worked in our favour was that Ceriale was clearly a maverick and liked me. He had already realized that the rebirth of Claridge’s was not a move to pander to the hotel’s established clientele. What would happen when they were all dead and gone? What he had in mind was a rebirth of this old lady to accommodate the new money of a younger, wealthier generation. He sought to bring glamour by the bucketful, and he did so with top American designers and investment funds that no one had ever dreamed about.

      Ceriale made it clear that, before we went any further, he wanted to meet me. He was one of those operators who was guided by his feelings about people. All his consultants were people he liked, and if we were going to secure Claridge’s, he and I would have to connect. I guess that I am a bit like that myself. It is not easy to work with people you don’t like, and it just so happens that I tend to like people who are good at their jobs. I think that it’s also linked to the search for loyalty. You want to feel that someone is with you for a bigger reason than just a pay packet.

      It was arranged for Chris to take John and the general manager of Claridge’s to Royal Hospital Road for lunch, and afterwards, I would come into the dining room and meet them. It gave us a chance to show John what we were about. Impress him, maybe.

      Lunch was a hard slog for Chris. The general manager, let’s just call him GM as in General Motors – was clearly not on our side. He couldn’t understand change, and yet was swept along by the energy and vision of his new boss. As Chris said, he had reached the pinnacle of hotel management and was now extending a very tentative toe into hotel realignment. But a step, perhaps, too far for him.

      So these two pumped Chris for all he was worth during lunch, asking him all the questions and expressing their doubts about how I would appear as the spearhead for the new restaurant. Both Chris and I knew that I was, without doubt, the right choice, but, for the new owners, there were big bucks riding on the correct decision, so nothing was going to be decided there and then.

      As I entered the dining room, I saw the three of them sitting in the corner. Chris did not look happy, and I was thinking that maybe things were not moving in the right direction. We all shook hands, and I could see at once why Chris was so impressed with John Ceriale. He is not tall, he is thinning on top to the point of balding, and he is straight out of the Mafia’s family album. He was dressed immaculately, with blue suit, cufflinks on double cuffs, and a quiet tie. I wondered if I should be kissing his hand. ‘Hey, Gordon, nice ta meet ya.’ He told me that he enjoyed lunch and that he was hoping we might do some stuff together with Claridge’s. He was definitely twitchy, and I saw his eye land on a waiter who had joined the company only a week before. ‘Haven’t I seen him before?’ he asked. My heart sank, as I knew that we had snatched this boy from Claridge’s. ‘Have you been stealing my fuckin’ staff, Gordon? Is this what you do over here? Is this how you operate?’ The man was all over me, and I saw Chris shifting from one foot to the other like he was trying to run through a trough of honey. GM was also uncomfortable with the way the conversation was going. More like a good slapping than a conversation, I was thinking. GM was chewing his top lip like there was a sticky wart on it.

      ‘If you don’t like me, Gordon, I’m outta here. Do you want me to fuck off out of the restaurant?’

      Jesus! What have I done here? I looked at him and it just came out. ‘Yes, he came over from Claridge’s,’ – GM was looking on stonily – ‘and he tells me that the staff have a picture of the new owners on their dartboard. He says that your head has the most holes in it. Why is that, John?’

      He looked at me, and the whole of Royal Hospital Road had a frozen moment. ‘Hey, is that so? They stick more darts in me than any other fella? Fucking brilliant.’ And with that, he laughed aloud, grabbed my hand and shook it like we’d been the best of buddies for years. I wondered afterwards what prompted me to say that. It was pretty dangerous stuff, and I can only think that either I was getting angry with this man for talking to me in my restaurant as though I was a criminal, or I just wanted to show him that we could toss in the occasional Molotov as well.

      Somehow, although I was not sure as they left immediately afterwards, I thought we had made progress.

      Our deal was eventually struck, and we got control of the dining room and kitchen. Blackstone paid for the design and refit in return for 11 per cent of our turnover by way of rent. Maybe a high rent, but just look at what we were getting: a beautiful dining room in the heart of Mayfair with all the glitz that was about to come shimmering through the door. Even the kitchen fit-out was paid for, although we had to wade in and replan the whole area after what we considered was a muddled first attempt. In later deals, this became our area of expertise, but that’s another story.

      Within the old kitchen, there was a drink dispense area just opposite the main stoves where countless cocktails had been served to the waiting staff to take through to the dining room. It had been in my mind to look for a space to put in a chef’s table, and this looked perfect. A chef’s table was originally just a table in the kitchen for friends of the chef or visiting chefs who would sit down and taste the kitchen’s offerings. This simple concept developed so that guests of the restaurant could also eat in the kitchen and learn more about what they were eating, about the ingredients and how they are cooked. Chris will always maintain that it was his idea, but the idea went up to the Claridge’s management for their approval. They thought the concept hilarious, particularly the GM, and asked what we imagined the turnover generated by such a table of six would be. ‘Probably around £440,000 a year,’ Chris replied. They continued to laugh, but we got our way, and a year after opening it, had turned over £500,000 – probably more than Claridge’s Royal Suite took in.

      The Chef’s Table became a trademark of our operation, and is a feature in nearly all of our restaurants. It makes great commercial sense. For years, guests never dreamed of coming near a commercial kitchen. Suddenly, everyone is interested – not just in food, but how it is put together, and its production has become theatre. The chefs love it when they see guests interested in what they do. Very often, they will invite the guests to the stove to help stir a pot or dice a shallot. The table is a great revenue source, and, occasionally, tips are exceptional – as once witnessed when the three ladies of a particularly lively Chef’s Table stood up and bared their tits in gratitude. The brigade cheered and the evening became buried in folklore. Unfortunately, it was my day off.

      The Chef’s Table is also the guarantee of total hygiene. Everyone working in the kitchen knows that clean is not enough. It has to look as it did on the day it opened. Shine, polish, burnish, sparkle – the whole nine yards. No fucking excuses.

      The opening of Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s was delayed by three months. It would have been inconceivable originally, but the combined noise of drilling and the preciousness expressed by hotel guests made the original opening date of July an impossibility. This had an unexpected benefit.

      The taking over of Claridge’s restaurant had brought to my attention the concept of TUPE, the Transfer of an Undertaking Protection of Employment. In essence, this meant that anyone employed by a going concern, company or business was automatically transferred as an employee to the new owners or employers, irrespective of how the transfer of the business took place. Sounds reasonable in the first instance – until you realize that you may be taking on employment liabilities relating to people with thirty years’ service. In the case of Claridge’s, there were something like eighty such employees, and this was a real concern. Not only had they been around this establishment for years, but during that time, they had taken on personas that would in no way suit the operation that we had in mind.

      What I didn’t realize was that they were as nervous about coming on board as I was about their existence. The easy life of serving twenty or so guests at lunch or dinner was about to come to an end. We were already working on 120 guests for lunch and 150 in СКАЧАТЬ