‘Being Gordon Ramsay’ Review: Chef Shows His Softer Side As He Takes On His Most Ambitious Project

Gordon Ramsay does not need an introduction. The British celebrity chef is one of the best-known names in the culinary world. Known for his unfiltered nature and impeccable kitchen skills, the man has earned his place in the industry. The star chef is the founder of Gordon Ramsay Restaurants, and over the years, his establishments have been awarded 17 Michelin stars in total. However, to the present generation, Ramsay is better known for his fiery, high-pressure and often profanity-loaded mentorship style. So, when the star chef announced his own docuseries, the buzz was inevitable.

Yes! You heard that right, Gordon Ramsay has recently released his six-part docuseries, Being Gordon Ramsay. The show follows Ramsay as he takes on one of the most ambitious challenges of his career. To launch five distinct businesses across the top floors of a London tower. The six-hour-long docuseries is a blend of intimate family access and granular footage of menu tastings, design squabbles, and the kind of last-minute crises that define large-scale openings. However, the question for viewers is whether the series’s intense detail justifies its runtime or if much of it functions as an extended piece of self-promotion.

Being Gordon Ramsay looks into the star chef’s high-risk launch with excruciating detail

Being Gordon Ramsay follows the celebrity chef’s ambitious journey to open one of the most challenging restaurant lines. However, at its heart, from the very get-go, it feels very weighty. There is over 27,000 square feet of space on the upper floors of a City skyscraper, which is being set to house a rooftop garden with a retractable roof, a 250-seat Asian-inflected restaurant called Lucky Cat, a branch of a well-known brasserie concept, a private dining proposition and a culinary academy. Like we earlier established, ambitious.

The project comes with a reported multi-million-pound price tag, with Gordon Ramsay claiming he is funding it personally with backing from the bank. However, stretching a single operation across five distinct hospitality models leaves plenty of room for drama. Viewers get to follow how construction delays, design disputes, and prototype menus that won’t manifest as Ramsay wants create immense tension. On the other hand, there are the small, obsessive choices, like apron pocket placement or whether leather seating looks too worn after a week, that will determine how each venue feels to guests.

While the camera lingers on those details, it sometimes works in the docuseries’ benefit, while other times it seems excessive. However, watching the teams repeatedly adjust a rum baba’s size to ensure it oxygenates correctly was not something viewers imagined witnessing. Nonetheless, seeing the tense tasting where a canape is dismissed in blunt terms further shows how much of a restaurant’s success rests on the small details we, as customers, don’t even notice. 

Being Gordon Ramsay feels like a polished promotional extension

While it’s insightful to see how the small details work, it also exposes Being Gordon Ramsay’s promotional impulse. A large portion of the footage serves as a behind-the-scenes sales pitch. Feeling more like polished rehearsals, strategic influencer invitations, and rooftop parties staged before the dust has fully settled.

The access to Gordon Ramsay’s family is a soft touch to the star chef’s hard edges

The series is an all-hands-on-deck situation with even the star chef’s family being involved in the project. The addition works wonderfully for the show, humanising the content by showing Gordon Ramsay’s softer side as he interacts with his wife and six children, and it serves as a perfect reminder of the private man beneath the harsh public persona. Fans get an insight into the Ramsay household’s playful breakfasts that turn into a critique of pancake thickness, family preparations for weddings, and the blurred line between parenting and mentoring for children already working in the business.

Those quieter moments give the series heart, showing a man who can be disarmingly tender and whose perfectionism seems driven as much by fear of loss as by ego. However, the series doesn’t shy away from personal history either; viewers see Gordon Ramsay’s past, marked by financial precarity and the fear that success could disappear at any moment. There are scenes that help explain the compulsive drive behind constant expansion. 

Being Gordon Ramsay is too lengthy

While six hours allows for a rare operational depth, it also leads to several repetitions. Some episodes revisit the same arguments and staffing troubles from nearly the same angles. The overexaggeration makes it look more like a branding exercise at times. Executive interference, staged interviews and the presence of production crews are never far from view, which makes it hard to fully trust the spontaneity of some scenes. Yet for viewers fascinated by the mechanics of hospitality, there is much to learn.

In the end, the docuseries is a must-watch for those who enjoy the messy unpredictability of new restaurants in condensed form or crave a methodical look at what it takes to open multiple dining concepts simultaneously. The show offers some useful promotional deliveries and engrossing material. Either way, the series confirms that for its subject, quitting is never really an option.

What are your thoughts on Being Gordon Ramsay? Let us know.

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