When it comes to sharing his opinion, Chef Gordon Ramsay doesn't hold back. His what-you-see-is-what-you-get (screaming in your face) personality has made him a reality TV star—and, more recently, an Internet meme, after he parodied himself calling a woman an "idiot sandwich" on The Late Late Show with James Corden.
The sketch proved he can poke fun at his reputation—and laugh at the moments he's lost it—but there's one blow-up that still gets his blood boiling. In fact, when asked when, out of every show he's filmed, he felt angriest, he doesn't hesitate for a second: "Amy's Baking Company," he says flatly.
He visited the Scottsdale, AZ-based shop back in 2013 while filming an episode of Kitchen Nightmares, and soon found himself so utterly fed up with the store owners, Amy and Samy Bouzaglo, that he quit on the spot.
"I've never thrown in the towel, ever, except for this one particular situation," he says, leaning forward in an armchair at Williams-Sonoma in midtown Manhattan, where he was demonstrating new recipes using the Philips AirFryer (and, naturally, we had to take a moment to talk all things MasterChef, Kitchen Nightmares and Hell's Kitchen). "I saw this lady ... trying to portray to customers that store-bought gnocchi that can sit at ambient temperature in a sous vide bag on a shelf for three years and dictated to customers it was fresh. You can't do that. You can't rob customers."
Over the course of the taping, Ramsay also caught Samy collecting tips meant for servers and found the couple was unreceptive to his criticism and advice.
"I said, 'F*ck it, I'm done. You are in denial. I'm not going to waste my time,'" he says. "[Kitchen Nightmares had a] $1.5 million-an-episode budget, and someone else deserves the chance to get me and my team in there."
Though that moment will go down for Ramsay as his angriest, he's surprisingly calm when he delivers the news to the Bouzaglos.
"If you're not willing to change, I'm not going to butt heads, argue, scream—whatever you want to say—but this is not normal," he told them. "You have the right to run the business the way you want to run the business. I have the right to do the right thing, and the right thing, for me, is to get out of here. Good luck."
You can check out the entire confrontation here:
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