Celebrity chef and restaurateur celebrates opening of first Gordon Ramsay Steak in Richmond.
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Gordon Ramsay’s eyes are continually scanning the room.
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Seated with his back toward a wall of windows, the British chef, author, TV star and restaurateur is facing into his new restaurant.
And he’s taking in every detail.
But Ramsay admits there are a few things he’d like to see tweaked.
“It’s off to a great start, but there are creases everywhere to be ironed out,” Ramsay says candidly.
Vancouver, it turns out, is a special place for the renowned chef.
Ramsay has spent a fair amount of time in Vancouver, including to train for an Ironman Triathlon in Seattle a few years ago. Noting its proximity to cities like Los Angeles and its “pristine water” for salmon fishing, Ramsay is happy to sing the praises of this province.
“I think it’s one of the best kept secrets, B.C.,” Ramsay says, adding that the local food scene is prolific. “And no longer underdogs. A force to be reckoned with.”
Ramsay got his first taste of the area 20 years ago, when he visited Whistler to ski. “There’s just so much freedom on top of those mountains,” Ramsay says.
He recalls being blown away by that restaurant’s approach to local sourcing back in 2009. It’s something Ramsay says has stuck with him ever since.
“To see them sourcing everything within a 100-mile radius — wine included, by the way — back then. You just forget how powerful that was. And now even more so,” Ramsay says.
The new Richmond steak house takes a page from that book
“Eighty-five per cent of our menu is sourced locally,” Ramsay says. “That is something that I worked endlessly on.”
That locality can be narrowed down to specifics, with 75 per cent of the produce used reportedly coming from Canada, along with 85 per cent of the beef, and 100 per cent of the pork and salmon. B.C. seafood features prominently on the menu, including chinook, sablefish, scallops and oysters.
The Gordon Ramsay Steak menu features many steak house menu mainstays like Beef Tartare ($26), Dungeness Crab Cake ($32) and, of course, lots of steak options ($78 for an 8-ounce AAA tenderloin), along with a few Ramsay signatures such as Beef Wellington ($148, serves two) and Sticky Toffee Pudding ($16). The menu also a few dishes inspired by the region: a locally sourced sablefish marinated in a miso soy and glazed with a bourbon-aged miso maple syrup.
But the menu is also an area where Ramsay sees some room to grow.
“Our head chef, 29 years of age, grew up in Mumbai. The first question, I asked him this morning, why aren’t you on the menu?” Ramsay says. “We’ll be back in the spring, and I want to see you on the menu.”
Open for a few weeks already, Ramsay is pleased with the buzz around the opening so far, which includes more than 250 reviews on Google and, of course, several social media shout-outs.
“I love that stuff,” Ramsay says when asked about the camera-eats-first approach that leads many people’s dining experience these days.
“A lot of chefs get really pissy with that stuff. I welcome that intrusion because it’s today, right? Because everyone’s a critic.”
Unlike waiting for a restaurant review to run in a publication, social media allows chefs and restaurants to receive instant feedback, he notes.
“It’s a double-edged sword, but we welcome it,” Ramsay says. “Move with it, or it moves you.”
So, go ahead. Post photos and videos of your meal at Gordon Ramsay Steak. Just don’t go calling it a ‘fine dining’ establishment in the caption.
“I’m not a big fan of the word ‘fine dining’. For me, it just feels a little bit pompous. If I mentioned that word to my mum, she’d run a mile,” Ramsay says.
“I started off in the basement of the neighbourhood bistro, and then went into a one-star, two-star, three-star. But I started with that, non-glamorous ingredients like wooden leeks, oxtail, cod, cheap cuts, cheeks, root vegetables.”
Ramsay recalled his early days working in Aubergine, as he describes it, “a tiny little bistro in the back end of Chelsea” that would become an integral part of his culinary journey.
“The kitchen was so bad, I couldn’t even make desserts. I had to depend on desserts made in Marco Pierre White’s kitchen. And then my pastry chef would go over there to cook the creme brûlées,” Ramsay remembers. “And then we found out a way of getting one creme brûlée cooking in our oven on top of the pilot light, one at a time. And we would sit there for hours because it was dilapidated. But we could still braise oxtail. I mention it now to the team, the phone on the bar was a pay phone. I was that embarrassed that we didn’t have the money to get landlines — and look at the difference now.
“We won a Michelin star within our first year. And then two years later, we got two stars. But it was still this neighbourhood bistro,” Ramsay adds. “You don’t go into fine dining. You need to go through the divisions.”
Comfortably seated at one of the restaurant’s tables, wearing a crisp white chef’s jacket and sipping a coffee, Ramsay seemed perfectly at ease as he spoke with excitement about his latest restaurant.
“Why sanitize that?” Ramsay says of the real emotions that arise in high-pressure situations. “And that’s the same with me. Hell’s Kitchen is a boot camp. It’s a culinary boot camp. If you turned around and told me, at the age of 25, that I would be in a position to enter a competition and win a quarter-million dollars. Do you have any idea how much that is for a chef?
“I’d give my right arm to be in that competition.”
Ramsay reminds viewers that what they see on the Fox show is edited for brevity — and entertainment.
“Of course they’re going to show the most prolific bits. I don’t give a f*ck,” Ramsay says. “I’m running a restaurant and it’s fully booked. And we’re real, we’re live. That’s what it’s like.
Being a chef, Ramsay says, is all about the learning process. Making mistakes, modifying, and then not making that same mistake again. It’s a lesson, he says, he shared with the team at his new restaurant in Richmond.
“And I will live and die by that. That’s the most important thing for me.”