So, it’s 7 Days Out on steroids
Try nine months out. The new documentary series, which will be shown on Netflix next year, will follow Ramsay and his team in the lead up to the opening of the chef’s new multi-faceted project at 22 Bishopsgate in the City of London, the capital’s second tallest building. Announced by Ramsay back in May and set to launch in February next year, the opening has been billed as the chef’s ‘largest investment yet’ and will encompass five new venues including outposts for his Lucky Cat and Bread Street Kitchen brands, a Gordon Ramsay Academy and, most intriguingly, a second, smaller iteration of his three Michelin star flagship Restaurant Gordon Ramsay.
Sounds like a whole new kind of kitchen nightmare
Indeed, but there are few chefs as adept at opening restaurants as Ramsay, whose global estate now stretches to more than 75 sites. Given the scale of his plans for 22 Bishopsgate it’ll be fascinating to peak behind the pass, so to speak, and see him bring the project the life. Perhaps more interestingly, this new series will also ‘provide exclusive access to the Ramsay family’, following the chef as he ‘balances his various work commitments and life as a husband to his wife, broadcaster and author Tana Ramsay, and father to their six children’.
Have we seen this side of Ramsay’s life before?
Not on TV, but Ramsay’s family has long had a presence in the public eye. As well as appearing on his own page, all of his children, bar his youngest son Jesse who was born last year, have their own open Instagram accounts and have gone on to establish individual careers. Tilly, Ramsay’s fourth child, has even gone on to follow her dad into the cheffing world, and now appears as a judge alongside him on his US TV show MasterChef Junior.
What does Ramsay stand to gain from this series?
The only time we’ve really seen Ramsay lift the veil on his own life before was in Boiling Point. Not the recent film and TV series of the same name, but the 1999 Channel 4 fly-on-the-kitchen-wall documentary that charted the opening of his first (and now flagship) restaurant, Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, on Royal Hospital Road in Chelsea. The show, which was followed in 2000 by a sequel called Beyond Boiling Point, was Ramsay’s first big television role, and it was the impact of his highly driven and hot-tempered personality in that show that paved the way for the likes of Kitchen Nightmares and Hell’s Kitchen. Of course, in the 20-odd years since then, Ramsay’s status has only ever grown bigger. In 2005, he was introduced to American audiences in a US version of Hell’s Kitchen, and a couple of years later a US version of Kitchen Nightmares also launched. Both shows continue to be made today with more than 450 episodes produced between them. Then there’s all the spinoffs and offshoots – the success of Hell’s Kitchen in the US has led to the creation of a themed restaurant chain inspired by the show that has several locations across the States; as well as the endless partnerships and sponsor tie ins – Ramsay is currently an ambassador for cookware company HexClad and is about to add an own-label pinot grigio to his growing range of supermarket products, as well as launch a glassware collection in partnership with Royal Doulton. Yet not since Boiling Point have we really had the chance to watch Ramsay take us behind the scenes of his own restaurant business. With that in mind, this new series is likely to be something of a full circle moment for him.
How much bigger can Ramsay get?
There’s no doubt that the show, given Netflix’s global reach, will further cement Ramsay’s position as the world’s biggest chef, introducing him to a whole new audience. And with his own company, Studio Ramsay, producing it, and Dionne Bromfield, director of various episodes of Gordon, Gino & Fred, behind the camera, it’s going to be sympathetic to its subject. How much we actually learn about his 22 Bishopsgate project remains to be seen, but it’s likely to tell us a lot about where Ramsay sees himself now and where he thinks he’s going.
