Heston Blumenthal is a third wheel as the pair reveal all about their culinary stardom and infamous beef. Expect endless juicy gossip, from pan-throwing to gatecrashing weddings … and mid-service kitchen sex
Never mind the scallops, here’s the Chef Pistols. Rise of the Rockstar Chef portrays the fine-dining dons of the 90s and 00s in the manner of a band biopic. In place of musical differences is a stolen reservations book and an argument about red mullet that reduced Gordon Ramsay to tears. How’s that for a kitchen nightmare?
As Ramsay, Marco Pierre White and Heston Blumenthal look back at their storied careers, it’s a culinary willy-waving contest. “We were bigger and better than the Beatles,” brags White. “And we fed more people than they did.” It’s hard to argue with the latter claim, unless you count Linda McCartney’s veggie sausages.
The mouthwatering question looming over proceedings is whether Ramsay and his estranged father figure, White, can be in the same room together, decades after their bitter bust-up, without taking copper-bottomed saucepans to each other’s heads. Their infamous feud, picked over in chewy detail, didn’t just involve allegations of diary pilfering and piscine punch-ups; there were further ones of fake table bookings, gatecrashed weddings and restaurant ejections. There is, in a very real sense, beef. It’s been braised in a rivalry reduction and slow-simmered in a testosterone jus.
The docuseries chronicles how the gifted-but-dysfunctional duo drove the British restaurant scene from global laughing stock to Michelin-starred powerhouse. It’s a tasty tale of pan-throwing, precision plating and the obsessive pursuit of perfection. If you enjoy watching angry men grating truffles and tweezing micro-herbs, Christmas has come early.
The third wheel, their former protege Blumenthal, often feels like a gooseberry. The Fat Duck trailblazer – inspired by “a Hungarian nuclear physicist playing around with egg whites” – is treated as a palate cleanser between proper courses. This is a Studio Ramsay production and neither the boss nor his Musketeer-haired mentor are willing to share the limelight.
Jamie Oliver was also considered to take part. Word is that White refused to sign up unless the bish-bash-boshing Essex geezer was scraped into the kitchen bin. After all, he’s never won a Michelin star.
White, quite rightly, is the headline act. We see how he shot to fame in the 80s, winning his first Michelin star at 33. Soubriquets soon pile up: the great White, Byron of the backburner. Mick Jagger of the Aga, Jesus in a chef’s jacket. With sniggering relish, Ramsay recalls him having sex with a starstruck diner in the toilet upstairs, then climbing back through the kitchen skylight to continue cooking her lunch. Hope hygiene inspectors weren’t in the house.
When Ramsay goes solo, the young Padawan turns on his Jedi master and their power struggle begins. White is a soul-searching romantic who views cookery as “gastronomic therapy for misfits” and talks misty-eyed of cultural revolution. “Revolution?” scoffs Ramsay, who wouldn’t know poetry if it blow-torched his balls. “It was a shit-fight.” The air goes out of the narrative when these rutting stags aren’t on screen.
Their frequently conflicting accounts are punctuated by talking heads who are no slouch with a spatula themselves – the likes of Tom Kerridge, Michel Roux Jr and Raymond Blanc. Stanley Tucci adds a sprinkle of stardust. We could probably live without Jodie Kidd and Max Beesley. Maybe they wandered in by mistake from a Channel 5 clip show in the adjacent studio.
Social class is a running theme. All three hail from humble backgrounds – “council-house rebels with a fucking cause”, as Ramsay puts it in typically potty-mouthed style. They broke the rules and rattled the establishment, before ultimately becoming the establishment. En route they created eye-wateringly toxic work environments – all shouting, aggressive knife-sharpening and comparing of burn scars.
“I guarantee a helluva lot of dick-swinging,” says Marcus Wareing at the prospect of a peace summit. Indeed, the entire series is an artisanal sausage fest. The alpha female is revered restaurant critic Fay Maschler, whose reviews could fill or empty a restaurant. She purrs about White “communing with a piece of wild salmon” and how “his intensity could glaze a creme brulee at 10 yards” but notes: “I admired his passion but he was actually quite dull, endlessly telling you about ingredients.” Food bores clearly haven’t changed. When Maschler gave his restaurant Harveys four stars out of five, legend has it that she knocked one star off because Marco refused to sleep with her. (White says: “I can honestly put my hand on my heart and say that’s not true.” Maschler says: “No, I didn’t want to go to bed with him.”) .
The heavily trailed reunion happens in the finale. It’s both as fascinating and infuriating as you might expect. White truly is the master(chef) of mind games. Prickly and unrepentant, he calls Ramsay “boy” to make him feel like an apprentice again. For all his conciliatory gestures, Ramsay still has a huge triple-cooked chip on his shoulder. At least White and Blumenthal are touchingly affectionate together.
What’s ultimately dished up is a flavoursome study of three gamechanging gastro geniuses. A sort of foodie Mount Rushmore, with their craggy heads carved from fondant potato rather than granite. It’s both an exercise in Cool Britannia nostalgia and an elegy for a lost era. Does it make for delicious entertainment? Yes, chef! Service please.
Rise of the Rockstar Chef is on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer
