TORONTO — He is the star of three television series and runs 19 high-end restaurants that together have earned 12 Michelin stars, but it took a trip to Burlington, Ont., this week for Gordon Ramsay to fully appreciate the extent of his cult fame.
A young woman at a book signing, part of a throng of more than 500 who had lined up starting the day before, had come with an unconventional request. Would he autograph her forearm so she could use it as a stencil for a tattoo?
"I said, 'Sweetie, don't do that, because when you meet your boyfriend, the love of your life, you'll want it removed,' " he recalled. " 'Trust me, please don't get ink on your skin.' "
Undeterred, the woman assured him it was too late for that kind of warning. "She turned around and lifted up her back," Mr. Ramsay said, raising the tail of his sports jacket for illustration. "There's a big 'HK' above her ass. That freaked me out."
Gordon Ramsay is being cagey about the details of a new Canadian venture. 'I would seriously consider it. But I'm doing one project at a time.' (Yvonne Berg for The Globe and Mail)
"HK" would be Hell's Kitchen, the Fox reality-TV series about aspiring chefs that catapulted the infamous British potty mouth to stardom in North America in 2005.
In southern Ontario to promote his latest cookbook, Gordon Ramsay's Fast Food, as well as the debut season of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares (U.S.A.), now airing on Food Network Canada, the chef admitted to being a bit weirded out by the bookstore reception.
"Sleeping out, camping out, with all the police and the tents, I thought, 'My God,' " he said over an early evening espresso at an outdoor cafe on Yorkville Avenue. "One lady drove from Montreal, but she missed the cut-off line, so she was fuming. Then there was a fight, which was just weird."
The better-heeled among those fans will be happy to hear, however, that Mr. Ramsay is in talks to open his first Canadian restaurant, likely to be a tapas-style casual fine-dining concept, at the corner of Yonge and Bloor streets. "We had an amazing offer before Christmas for a new build," he said, adding he has until July to make a decision on the venture, which would open in the fall of 2009. "I would seriously consider it. But I'm doing one project at a time." (He is also considering an undisclosed site in Vancouver.
If chefs are the new rock stars, Mr. Ramsay is the total package: a sort of cross between bad-boy virtuoso Keith Richards and charismatic charmer Mick Jagger - only much taller (he's 6 foot 2).
Even at 41, he manages to carry off a blond mop of trendy bed-head hair, which sits atop a trim, marathoner's frame that on this day is dressed in a blue sports jacket, jeans and running shoes.
Then there's his most famous rock-world analogue, the Ozzy Osbourne mouth. "Sod the critics. I'm fed up. I hate being judged by individuals who know less about food than I do," he said on being asked about his cooking being dismissed as "unimaginative and bland" by a columnist in Le Figaro of France, where Mr. Ramsay just opened a restaurant.
"We kissed their asses and embraced the French in Britain 35 or 40 years ago when they came over with their cuisine français."
The tirade is classic Ramsay, the antipathy and vitriol cranked to 11 for the benefit - one can't help but suspect - of a reporter.
It's that hair-trigger temper and instinct for sensationalism that helped catapult Mr. Ramsay to the stratosphere of haute cuisine in the late 1990s.
Born in Scotland and raised in government-subsidized housing outside London, he signed with the Glasgow Rangers soccer team at 16 before an injury forced him into the world of pub and hotel kitchens. Eventually seeking out and apprenticing under famed London chef Marco Pierre White, Mr. Ramsay found financial backers through Mr. White, in 1993, for his first restaurant, Aubergine.
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