Enjoying time in hell with Gordon Ramsay

THIS WEEK’S WINNER

MANILA, Philippines - Inez S. Reyes, 50, was a corporate marketing executive at Jollibee Foods Corp., Coca-Cola Export Corp. and Ginebra San Miguel before retiring to run a food chain business with her husband. A mother, she studied economics at UP Diliman and took culinary courses at Culinary Institute of America in NYC, among others.

My discovery of the sublime enjoyment of food came late in my life — upon marriage, in fact, to a man who was born to a culinary heritage. In his family gatherings, there would be endless discussions of the best way to prepare this dish or that dish, where to source the best type of this ingredient or that, debates on how their Lola would cook the old family recipes. At first I found it amusing. Later, as I moved up the corporate ladder and was benefited with a representation allowance that allowed me to try all of the latest restaurants, I slowly discovered that, indeed, food could be marvelously cooked, and as such, could be an experience like no other.

So I began to collect cookbooks. While I certainly did not have the talent for actually cooking a meal, I loved the culture and history behind cuisines and dishes, and I had actually dreamed of becoming a food writer.

Then, lo and behold, cooking shows arrived! I first saw these in the United States, then to my great delight, they started airing on local cable television. Cooking shows became my addiction, my favorite stress-reliever.

One day, I saw our two young sons watching a DVD of a television series called Hell’s Kitchen starring a supposedly famous British chef, Gordon Ramsay. The kids were totally engaged in the plot — a group of hopeful contestants competing for Chef Ramsay’s approval in a pressure-filled restaurant kitchen. The kids simply loved Ramsay’s fiery temper, tantrum-like behavior, balanced with uplifting, sincere encouragement when a contestant would really deliver.

From then on, while I did not particularly enjoy the Hell’s Kitchen show, I did become a fan of Chef Ramsay. And if there was anything I admired in him, it was his constant passion for perfection.

Naturally, I started to seek out his cookbooks in stores, bought them, and encouraged our then 11-year-old budding chef son to try cooking his recipes. One summer, we discovered just what a genius Chef Ramsay was. Every Friday, for that entire summer, we would invite my siblings to our home, and our son would cook a three-course meal for them, all coming from the recipes of Chef Ramsay’s cookbook entitled Fast Food. They were all simple recipes, but nevertheless, special in their own way, and every single one of them — absolutely delicious.

Needless to say, we have a collection of all of Ramsay’s cookbooks available in Manila. Not only are the recipes great, but because the books are written in a masterful tone and with honest eloquence one cannot help but read them over again.

So you cannot imagine my happiness when, a few months ago, I came across Chef Ramsay’s autobiography, Roasting In Hell’s Kitchen. What a find!

I could not put it down. I was totally absorbed. Written in his engaging and straightforward style, you actually feel that you are watching the chef tell his story. And what a story it is — the stuff of films, really. From a practically poverty-stricken childhood with an abusive father; to that moment when he realized that, indeed, he could do this, he could cook; to the competitive, intense, sometimes cruel, but always fired-up experiences he went through as he trained and worked (at times for free), with the world’s greatest chefs; to his eventual success with one restaurant after another; to his breakthrough in the United States market; to his still being dragged down to this day by a drug addict brother whom, like his father, he could not seem to bring himself to shake from his life.

But what success he has had, and how valuable the lessons he shared about the road to becoming a consistent Michelin star chef (“No lies. No dirty chefs. No clock watchers. No mummy’s boys. No fat chefs.”). One appreciates even the business lessons (“Choose partners that share your attitude towards running a restaurant business. Put only your own trained chefs in your next restaurants. Check the market before you decide to take the lease.”). Today, my husband and I run a fast casual food chain, and our son is clearly chef-CEO material, having reached a finalist position in a local kiddie reality cooking show. We sat down and talked about Chef Ramsay’s lessons about work and success. Whatever background you come from, success is there for your taking. But you must want it. And work hard for it. If I could turn back the hands of time, it would have been great to be a chef working with Gordon Ramsay. But since that is not possible, I will content myself with being an expert on his cooking (at least theoretically), with thinking about the life lessons he shared, with planning and saving for a trip to visit all his restaurants around the world, and most of all, with being inspired by his life, which was really all about being passionate about perfection.

And by the way, he was simply great in the Master Chef series.