Gordon Ramsay’s Playing with Fire. Gordon Ramsay
out of the blue, a small hotel operator called David Levin approached me to take charge of his restaurant, which had just lost its Michelin-starred chef. Before I knew it, he had offered me £150,000 a year and 5 per cent of the profits. Fuck me. This was double what I was earning, and I could see that the site in Mayfair was just right for the three Michelin stars. They shone in my mind much brighter than any share certificates or, come to think of it, any roll-out Italian pizza parlours.
However, although I had had lots of talks with David, I was a bit confused about how this might all pan out. There was a son who was clearly going to take over the business at some time, and in the back of my mind, I was wondering why the other chef had left. I can’t say that it was a case of once bitten, but I had acquired a sixth sense about who really might be my friend and who might ultimately sell me down the river in a leaky sieve.
So I spoke to the one person who would have my interests at heart, and that was Chris, my father-in-law. I explained the offer and asked if he would meet with David and let me know what he thought. I didn’t know it then, and I am fucking positive that Chris didn’t give it a further thought, but this was the very first step we took together in the world of commerce. It was to be the initial, tentative coming together of two people who were totally different in their skills and ages. As time went on, these differences were to meld together in an unusual alliance, and it became clear that we were as alike as two wings on a plane.
The two old-timers met for lunch at The Capital and, like so many successful businessmen, David failed to listen to a thing Chris said about my ambitions or dreams. As far as he was concerned, it was a done deal and Chris was in the way. Be courteous enough to the father-in-law and he will, no doubt, go along with the grand plan.
I think that Chris was a little wary of trying to muscle in on my life and into a business that he knew very little about. Either way, it was not long before I was invited to the offices of Withers for what I thought was just another meeting. Chris agreed to come along, and there we were in front of three lawyers, none of whom was mine, and David’s son. Apparently, David was on the golf course, treating today’s procedures as a done deal. Chris looked puzzled as he scanned the documentation in front of him. One of the three lawyers smiled and indicated that this was a contract now awaiting my signature.
The kick under the table from Chris came as a surprise and fucking well hurt. It was to become a regular method of communication in later meetings when things were going wrong. Chris asked if we could have five minutes, and out of the room we went. He looked at me and asked two simple, amazing questions. ‘Gordon, what do you really want to do in life? Do you want to work for someone, or do you want to go it alone?’ I was beginning to realize, at last, that the world was beginning to rotate.
Ten minutes later, we had proffered our apologies to the signing committee, who, no doubt, relayed news of our departure to the golf course, and we were on our way out of this firm of very expensive lawyers.
We had, in that one moment, agreed to go it alone. Two unlikely partners and only a dream between us, and I had just learned an important lesson: you need to know what you’re aiming for in order to reach it.
The saga at Aubergine still had another torturous six months to run. I was still refusing to sign any contract, especially as one of the clauses would bar me from opening a restaurant within a twenty-five-mile radius of Aubergine if I ever left. Franco Zanellato and Claudio Pulze sold their shares to Giuliano Lotto, giving him 90 per cent of the company, which meant he could do what he liked. What he liked, at this point, was to raise prices, move my staff around, and talk about strange plans for bistros in Bermuda. Of the three Italians, Giuliano, a former stockbroker, knew the least about the restaurant trade.
What we were now looking for was the big chance, and that chance suddenly appeared with a call from my old boss.
When the time is right with plans, designs, borrowings and staff, mix them in a bowl with a spoonful of intense passion.
IT IS STRANGE, but of all the influential chefs who have been documented in my life, the one who gave me the greatest leg-up is hardly ever mentioned. I had worked for Pierre Koffmann at La Tante Claire, and had even taken Marcus Wareing from him to be my right-hand man at Aubergine, and it was he who was about to give me the very opportunity that I needed.
Pierre had been running La Tante Claire for twelve years in a strange backwater of Chelsea called Royal Hospital Road. The road was named after the home of the Chelsea Pensioners, the retired ex-soldiers who bring colour to the area with their scarlet coats and incredible personal histories. It runs parallel to the River Thames from Pimlico to Cheyne Walk, a rat run where National Express buses come barrelling along to avoid the snarl-ups of the Embankment traffic, and its buildings camouflage a wealthy population of socialites and Sloanes.
I had worked at La Tante Claire as head chef after returning from France. It was a brief period of employment, marked by Pierre’s disappearance the day before I arrived, leaving an enigmatic, dismissive note. He was on holiday, and a three-day handover before he entrusted me with his beautiful cuisine would have been helpful. But he was a man of few words and, being very French, had little time for anything except cooking and rugby.
La Tante Claire had three Michelin stars and, as such, it was a destination restaurant. It wouldn’t have mattered where it was located because people sought it out as a centre of gastronomy. Any other restaurant in this location might have struggled if it relied on customers just passing by, as nobody ever did, except to buy a newspaper or walk the dog. But Pierre was comfortable there. He had a fabulous reputation and was happy to close seven weeks each year for holidays, as the French tend to do, and his staff were more than happy to follow suit.
I didn’t really know why he wanted to move, but he had lost his wife not long before, and had also been offered the chance to move La Tante Claire to The Berkeley, a hotel that was part of the Savoy Group. So his immediate problem was how to shift the existing lease on the Royal Hospital Road restaurant, at which point his Gallic gaze fell on me. Would I be interested in buying the unexpired lease for £500,000? I had no money and, quite frankly, he could have been asking for £5 million. But this was where Chris came in. I was happy to sit on the sidelines and watch him deal with this tiny obstacle.
I had no idea about Chris’s personal finances. What I did realize was that the money Pierre wanted would be just the half of it. There would be a much bigger bill if we were ever going to change this rather tired restaurant into Gordon Ramsay’s début as a chef patron. That sort of money was just not lying around in people’s bank accounts, and we were going to have to get involved in the world of banking.
Chris put together a proposal and sent it down the wire to a bank manager he had known and dealt with for years at the Bank of Scotland. Iain Stewart had been involved in earlier restaurant businesses at the highest culinary level, including none other than my much-respected boss in an earlier era, Albert Roux. This was lucky because it gave the bank an insight into the economics of Michelin-starred dining – what it cost, but also what it could earn. Claudio Pulze, one member of the Italian trio at Aubergine, once told Chris that a three-star restaurant could never make money. Fortunately for us, Iain Stewart had seen the living proof that Claudio was wrong, and he was able to reassure the bank’s credit committee. This removed any lingering doubts that the bank might have had about lending us the money.
So I dug out my one and only suit from a very sparse wardrobe and set off with Chris to the old P&O building at the bottom of Trafalgar Square for an introductory meeting. I could feel my bollocks shrinking as I was shown into the meeting room with three or four banking individuals dressed in grey suits, blue-striped shirts and forgettable ties.
So forgettable, in fact, that