Salon.com Life | In memory of Gordon Ramsay:
Yes, Gordon Ramsay: good and pure. Because the sad thing is that it never had to be this way. Ramsay -- the real Ramsay -- is no hack. His restaurants worldwide have earned him a combined 12 Michelin stars. (That may not sound like many, but three stars is the highest rating possible, and earning even one is an honor. Lucifer will be burning winged pigs on a bitter night before most of Food Network's chefs become capable of earning just one star.) Ramsay was a respected chef in Britain well before his introduction to American audiences. He trained under the infamous Marco Pierre White as well as the revered French chefs Guy Savoy and Joël Robuchon, and now has more than a dozen restaurants in his portfolio. There is no sugarcoating him: Ramsay was always, long before Fox twisted his personality beyond all recognition, an asshole. But his screaming used to serve a purpose. It used to be a small part of what he did in the kitchen -- at least, the parts we saw on television -- and it was done for a reason. For motivation, for teaching, for a good old-fashioned kick in the ass when one of his cooks needed it. On British television, that's mostly still how Ramsay operates. Ramsay is, when he wants to be, a wonderful teacher, someone who is capable of making even the most complicated of techniques instantly comprehensible, even to an inexperienced home cook. But that's just how the British get to experience him. Perhaps it's a symbol of how others see the States, and even the low esteem we have for ourselves: The intelligent, nuanced Ramsay goes to the British (who've managed to retain an air of sophistication even though so much of their humor is based on a theory that ugly men in dresses are never not funny), but the blowhard Ramsay gets fed to the stupid Americans -- we're given a caricature, a man almost purely evil, who's cruel just because he can be.
8:47 PM
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