An Inside Look At The Las Vegas Dining Influence Of Gordon Ramsay And His Fox Network Show: Exclusive Interview

The Las Vegas dining culture has undoubtedly been influenced by Chef Gordon Ramsay with his series of branded restaurants. The celebrity chef has established a significant culinary presence in what he calls, "The most competitive culinary city in the world."

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On February 4, Caesars Palace and chef Ramsay celebrated the five-year anniversary of the first Gordon Ramsay Hell's Kitchen at Caesars Palace Las Vegas. The Michelin-starred chef and television personality took a few moments to discuss what this landmark in his culinary career means to him and his team and how he continues to push through to grand milestones.

Q: Congratulations on five years of outstanding business with HK. What are you most excited about for the celebration tonight?

A: For a 220 seater restaurant to have 2 million people grace the floor within 5 years is crazy…Tonight [February 8] at 6:30pm, a table of two is our 2 millionth customer and I will be there to welcome them unbeknownst to them. 5 years, it feels like 1 year, it’s gone so quickly.

Q: Can you recall the initial moments of beginning the build project and concept of HK?

A: I remember going through with that hammer and smashing the front door of Serendipity in Hell’s Kitchen thinking, “How do we get the show to work in Vegas? How do I build the restaurant like the set? How do the customers understand that what they see on the TV is what they see when they walk through the door—the red kitchen, the blue kitchen, the little confessionals…the energy of the kitchen?”

So, I took a big gamble and Caesars was incredible at understanding that gamble. But if there is ever a city to gamble and get it right it was with Caesars in Vegas.

Q: Looking back at when you first opened to what it has become now, what things about HK have gone exactly as you intended it to?

A: The thing that I was most concerned about was the energy. Restaurants are theater! Restaurants are amazing spaces to break bread and connect and Hell’s Kitchen did that with a bootcamp culinary program show on TV.

Let’s be honest, when I launched Hell’s Kitchen back in 2004, 19 years ago, there was no primetime TV food show and so it was quite groundbreaking. That was the first thing—the energy, the theater, the blue, red kitchen…That was the big important thing of the DNA and the second thing really was the consistency of the food.

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I celebrate 25 years of vertical Ramsay this year and the longest British chef to maintain three-star Michelin and that’s 40 people for lunch and 40 people for dinner…Hell’s Kitchen does that in an hour. So I just have to track back and look at what goes into that kind of attention to detail.

I can’t try out new ideas on a Monday lunchtime...I can’t launch something on Friday…it needs to be a home run every time. It needs to be a huge success.

The level of scrutiny when we put new dishes on and we go to that RND development is off the chart. I want to embrace the talent in there by bringing the best out of them like we do on the show. It’s that juxtaposition of giving them the freedom to develop, making sure it stays within the Hell’s Kitchen sort of model but getting the best out of them and making them feel inspired by seeing their success on that as well.

So I want a launchpad for them, then selfishness for them to continue with or without the show, they still need to function as a talent. If I gave you a list and [showed] you what chefs have done there in the last five years and gone on and launched their own careers and become part of the restaurant phenomenon, it’s just as exciting as the TV exposure behind the scenes.

Q: What aspects have surprised you regarding how HK has evolved?

A: There’s the pressure of watching the show. There [were] customers there last night that started watching it at bloody 15 years of age. They’re now in their thirties and they’ve got three kids and they just came in last night and they want perfection.

People walk in there with their expectation to not play with you but just to hold you accountable to those standards, which I love. I’m not shy of that…that was the big surprise.

When you hear [music] bands live it’s not quite like the album because it’s not mixed, it's not blended. It’s not the same with food, food is live in that moment where it needs to be absolute utter perfection.

You can’t judge on TV; you can only see visuals because you can’t taste a f*cking thing and so I’ve got this scenario…It’s a lovely unorthodox style of creating a phenomenal restaurant brand from a TV show.

Q: What are some of the biggest achievements thus far with this dining destination?

A: This year the revenue sales will be $55M in that one site, $1M a week. We have served more than 783,318 beef wellingtons, 489,702 pan seared scallops, 369,863 orders of lobster risotto and 716,097 sticky toffee puddings.

So 783,000 f*cking wellingtons…I’m reading these numbers this morning saying, “Sh*t! Do you have any idea how many cows that is? Oh my God!”

Q: Your restaurant serves so many guests, how does the kitchen and staff keep up with the demand?

A: Because of the magnitude of what goes on in there, it’s not like fast-casual. It’s relentless. There’s no let up. There’s a thousand people a day. There’s three brigades—eight, nine-hour shifts—there’s a whole RND [research and development] underneath Hell’s Kitchen, the secret kitchen just purely making wellingtons.

Q: How has your relationship with your staff evolved since the opening?

A: The network of talent and what we are producing culinary wise in partnership with Caesars is incredible. I’ve been a big advocate of succession. Vegas is an incredible, competitive city and my job is to make sure they don’t burn out.

There’s always that crossover…the success on TV. Can they make it in the real world? So the professional chefs have embraced the TV talent and the TV talent have embraced the professional world because the winners of Hell’s Kitchen get to become head chefs across Hell’s Kitchen.

I see the winners of Hell’s Kitchen going into the professional restaurants…the pressure’s on you…everyone’s looking at you thinking, “Is this going to work? Can we function? Can we run to perfection?” That crossover is important but there’s a really good understanding of the synergy between the show and the restaurant and how we amalgamate the talent.

Q: What are the main ways that you wish to inspire your staff?

A: I force my team to travel. Travel is so important and is about becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable, taking on different diverse cultures, ethnicities and understanding how the other side of food works. I was very lucky to partner up with Nat Geo and Disney and travel the world with Uncharted and get into the off beat bits of the countries you never get to see from a tourist’s point of view.

So getting into Indonesia and understanding that this is a great rendeng, understanding a butter chicken with the fragrance in Kerala and going to India, high altitude ingredients in Machu Picchu and the concentrated flavors of these high-altitude ingredients was just incredible! That just blew my mind!

I need to do that RND. I need to come back to my bedrock and explain to the chefs where I’ve been. They look towards me for someone that is inspiring them still as opposed to some chef who wants to come in a hang on the hotplate and f*cking open a bottle of Champagne and start revelling your success, that’s the opposite to what I am.

I still don’t sit down in restaurants and loiter, I still don’t want fanfare. I want to be behind the line and tell them what I’ve got, what I’ve seen and what’s the next big thing coming down.

Q: You have quite the presence in Las Vegas and return time and time again with new restaurant concepts and culinary offerings for our city. What excites you when you think of the future of the city of Las Vegas?

A: I had this moment in November when I was [sitting] on the roof, 10:30 at night. I love Formula 1 racing cars and I sat there thinking, “Oh my God, my two favorite sports, food and racing together.” These cars are driving down the Strip and they could literally put their hand out of a cockpit and pick up a beef wellington.

I’m just excited that it’s finally coming to Vegas. It’s what Vegas can do for F1 as opposed to what F1 can do with Vegas because there is no more competitive city anywhere in the world culinary wise [and] entertainment wise than Las Vegas. I strongly believe it will become our Monaco of the Grand Prix site because it's got everything you could possibly want—visuals, entertainment, history, nostalgia and the Strip.

To have these cars driving 200 miles an hour down the Strip is just going to be a once in a lifetime opportunity. I drove past the paddock today and just the whole thing is in-build now you can start seeing the garages you can see Ferrari, Aston Martin, Red Bull—beautiful! I love architecture and the ways things build.