Gordon Ramsay believes that restaurant influencers are now the most powerful critics in the industry and says he has relied on them to help spread the message about his most recent London restaurant openings at 22 Bishopsgate.
Speaking in the first episode of the new Netflix documentary Being Gordon Ramsay, which charts the opening of five Ramsay projects at the City venue – including Lucky Cat, Bread Street Kitchen, and Gordon Ramsay High, the chef and restaurateur says that online influencers have now become more important than traditional restaurant critics.
“Ten years ago, we were depending on their pens. Ten years ago, we were depending on their insults. Ten years ago, we were depending on their egos,” says Ramsay of restaurant critics. “They destroyed restaurants over 25 years.
“We’ve taken so much shit from critics.”
While also saying that “constructive criticism is something we thrive on”, Ramsay says he believes much of the criticism aimed at his restaurants became personal. In the documentary he reflects on the time he famously threw the late Sunday Times critic AA Gill out of his restaurant while dining with Dame Joan Collins in 1998, admitting it was wrong but also describing Gill as a ‘knobhead’.
Influencers under the spotlight
Ramsay’s views come at a time when the proliferation of restaurant influencers is coming under the spotlight. In a column for the London Standard published earlier this week, respected restaurateur Jeremy King said that he was fed up with influencers ‘overrunning his restaurant and ruining the experience of bona fide guests’.
“I think we all wish to influence, or be influenced, in one way or another - it is largely the human condition - but sadly it is so often the case that when anything is monetised, the ugly aspects will soon be revealed,” he writes.
King says he has begun to find customers arriving with suitcases and tripods at his restaurant The Park and then ordering very little, often leaving the table as the food arrived and being absent for long periods.
“We would often be cajoling women out of the loos to eat their meal and when they eventually returned to the table, they would complain that the food was cold and refuse to pay for it,” he says.
By contrast, Ramsay talks about the importance of influencers in the launch of 22 Bishopsgate, and says that a hard hat influencer event he held before it opened sent a message to the traditional restaurant critics.
When asked about it, he says: “The hard hat party was designed to fuck off every food critic in the country… After 25 years of restaurant bashing, the influencer event was a clear move to say thanks but no thanks.”
The event, for ‘100 of the most powerful influencers’ was created by Ramsay to say: “I fucking need you guys”, according to the chef.
“A lot of chefs hate these influences because they don’t understand where they are going with their phones and the constant posting, but they are very powerful.
“They don’t take six weeks to fill a restaurant; they post and it’s gone viral and gone in seconds to the other end of the world. They are the most powerful critics on the planet today.”