Featured Image Credit: Momma Cherri/Facebook
Topics: Gordon Ramsay, Celebrity, News, Film and TV
Niamh Shackleton
Topics: Gordon Ramsay, Celebrity, News, Film and TV
A former restaurant owner whose establishment featured on Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares has revealed what the celebrity chef is really like.
Ramsay and his foul mouth are known across the globe, and his savage personality has been demonstrated on his TV shows Kitchen Nightmares and Hell's Kitchen for decades.
From calling chefs an 'idiot sandwich' and a 'f**king donut', to telling someone that there was enough garlic in their dish to 'kill every vampire in Europe' — Ramsay has always known to be just as creative with his insults as he is with his menus.
But people recently saw a new side to the famous chef on his Netflix show, Being Gordon Ramsay. The series looked at his life at home with his wife and children, as well as the development of his biggest product yet: 22 Bishopsgate in London.
Advert
He came across as a bit of a pussycat with his friends and family, but what's he really like to work with?
Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares ran for several seasons and took place in both the US and the UK. One restaurant to feature on the show back in 2005 was Momma Cherri's Soul Food Shack in Brighton.
Over 20 years on from her time on the show and Charita Jones, the owner of the restaurant, has lifted the lid on working with Ramsay and what he's like.
Explaining how her establishment came to be on the show, she said, sparking on behalf of CasinoHawks: "We opened in 2001 and three years later I got this note through the door at the restaurant one day.
"It said, Channel Four Kitchen Nightmares are looking for new restaurants who have not been open for more than five years to come on board this new project with Gordon Ramsay. I was interested, so I gave them a call."
Charita also went on to reveal what Ramsay's like behind the camera and recalled a time she actually told him off.
"He was very nice," she said. "At the very beginning, when we were upstairs in the kitchen, and I think the first time he dropped the F-bomb word to one of my chefs, I looked at him and I said, 'Gordon, do you talk like that to your mama?' And he said, 'No, Mama.' I said, 'There you go. I don't expect to hear that language.'"
Charita went on: "I don't mind it when it's talking around someone’s actions, but swearing directly at someone I didn’t like. I then treated him like my little brother. We’re equal.
"There was banter between the chefs. When it came to my waitresses and my staff, I wasn't having it because my thing is, and I did say to Gordon, 'I have so much respect for you. I expect the same.' And that was it."
After the episode with her restaurant aired on Channel 4, Charita said her answering machine crashed just 10 minutes later as 'everyone in the UK was trying to make a booking'.
"We were fully, fully booked for six months within 20 minutes," she recalled. "I had to turn a lot of people away, I think a minimum of 80 people for a couple of weeks."
Sadly, Momma Cherri's Soul Food Shack is no longer open. The restaurant was forced to close in 2009 due to a stock market crash.
Now, Charita spends her days making content online and boasts over 200,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel.