12 COVER STORY WEEKLY | 01.12.17
Fish, and passion chips
A few fast hours in the Las Vegas life of Gordon Ramsay By
Br ock
R a d ke
“I’m going to get behind the line now where I’m more comfortable. I’m actually quite shy,” Gordon Ramsay
says, and of course everybody laughs, because that’s just ridiculous. This is a chef who went on TV and has now reached Oprah-like levels of media moguldom. You know him from his many restaurants and shows and books and products but also from headlines like Vanity Fair’s “How Gordon Ramsay Built His Fame into a Billion Dollar Brand,” or Forbes’ “The Chef That Ate the World: How Gordon Ramsay Earned $60 Million Last Year.”
This isn’t just some guy frying up fish and chips. This is Gordon f*cking Ramsay. Who then gets behind the line … to fry up some fish and chips. “It’s still a bit early in the morning, so don’t kick my nuts in too much,” he says to some VIP types as he gets into position. His fourth restaurant on the Las Vegas Strip is his most casual yet, and even though it won’t open for another hour on this November Saturday, there’s a crowd stretching down the Linq Promenade, because everybody knows he’s here. After he finishes schmoozing and posing for pictures with the people in here, he’ll schmooze and pose for pictures with the people out there, and then we’ll get to chat. Later, I’ll finally get to taste his new food. The chips are fine, but the fish is lovely, hand-cut cod filets that stay flaky and moist while the batter gets crunchy, not just crispy. The curry-mango sauce beats the hell out of standard tartar, and you can get fried shrimp or sausages, too. Also, the peach-ginger lemonade is sublime. *
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Is it more fun to come to Las Vegas to do fish and chips than
it has been to spend time at your more upscale restaurants? Well, yes. Steak [at Paris Las Vegas] was our first foray, and that was incredible. BURGR [at Planet Hollywood] and Pub & Grill [at Caesars Palace] opened up within eight weeks of each other, so we were really up against it there. I was sleeping here seven nights a week and flying back to LA to tape every other day and coming back. So Fish & Chips is a humble departure, and yeah, a bit of fun. We’ve elevated it, made it a little more sexy, made it a little more Cool Britannia and jazzed it up. My mom said to me a few weeks ago, “You’ve got no idea how proud I am that you’ve got your first fish and chips shop in Vegas,” and I’m thinking, sh*t, Mom, of all the restaurants from a three-star Michelin flagship to an amazing brasserie kitchen to Le Bordeaux [in France] last year, you tell me you’re proud because of a f*cking fish and chips shop? And then [she said] she was going to phone for reservations. Trust me, Mom, you cannot book there. There’s no phone. So she’ll come, and we’re going to see Rod Stewart [at the Colosseum] and get fish and chips and walk down the Strip. She’s 70. To get that seal of approval made it so much more worth it.