Tuesday, November 15, 2011

what a twit

From the Gordon Ramsey interview in October UK edition of Playboy. Credit to Playboy for the extremely stupid question about the nature of being a chef, and to Ramsey himself for the asshole answer, which has SWEETFUCKALL to do with cooking (interesting to contrast his with the "never trust a skinny chef" dictum, which was also assholely). Also, credit to both of them for barging ahead immediately afterward with the idiom "spreading yourself thin" in a way that to me adds extra Duh to his already specious thinking about the phenom of the chef brand:
Q8 PLAYBOY: How do you not weigh 300 pounds?

RAMSAY: I like the Chinese ethic of eating four or five small bowls a day. I don’t think chefs should be fat. I was a fat chef once. I think it’s the most disgusting trait for any chef to walk into a dining room at 450 pounds and expect people to eat his or her food. My father died of a heart attack at the age of 53. I’ve never smoked in my life. I love keeping fit. I don’t like sitting around.

Q9 PLAYBOY: Clearly not. You have more than two dozen restaurants around the world, three TV shows here and three in the U.K., cookbooks, promotional tie-ins, four young kids. Do you ever worry you’re spreading yourself too thin?

RAMSAY: Oh, come on. Do you think ­Wolfgang Puck has spread himself too thin with Puck Express and a $400 million company? Fuck no. For a guy with 127 restaurants, he looks great and he’s cool as a cucumber. I can only hope to continue at that level at 62. But he does it the same way I do it and the same way Thomas Keller or Joël Robuchon or any other great chef does: You hire great people.