Gordon Ramsay is walking — striding — through the glass-walled dining room of Lucky Cat, his new restaurant on the 60th floor of 22 Bishopsgate. It is London’s highest restaurant, so far up that the building’s viewing deck is two floors below. “Come here,” he says, beckoning by the window. I mutter something about vertigo. Ramsay nods earnestly. “I had the same thing,” he says, “until I started abseiling down the side of mountains. All of a sudden, I got over that fear — by taking on that fear.” The thing is, Gordon Ramsay is not like the rest of us.
Neither is he like most chefs; most chefs don’t open five places at once. He’s more like an old soldier (or is it Action Man?) — lots of chat about “running drills”, “taking the blows”, “standing strong” — and for his latest mission has commandeered four of the building’s floors: on level 58 is the Gordon Ramsay Academy, quite probably the highest cookery school in the world. Above that, launching later in the year, will be an outpost of his Bread Street Kitchen chain. On level 60, there’s Lucky Cat and the 12-seater Restaurant Gordon Ramsay High, and then a large rooftop terrace opening, right on the top, with a Japanese garden and a retractable roof. “That’s been an absolute head f***, I’m not going to lie. But I was having dinner with [Soho House founder] Nick Jones in West Hollywood, and this thing retracted and I thought, ‘Oh my god, I have to have one.’”
22 Bishopsgate is a project he’s fought for. “Every single heavyweight in the restaurant scene was desperate for it,” he says. But does Ramsay, the world’s most famous chef, really have competition? “It’s a good question,” he says. He praises Richard Caring (“the guy’s a billionaire, how do you compete with that?”) while dismissing Alain Ducasse (“he’ll never invest his own money in London”). Ramsay has invested, it turns out, and heavily. “I’ve got skin in the game, it’s personal. It’s not a label slap.” How much? “I’m a realist and I take these opportunities f***ing seriously.” How much? “We’re in excess of £20 million, plus.
It is not, he says, a good time to be opening a restaurant. “We’re faced with tough running costs, because of increased labour costs, because of the increased National Insurance contributions. Now Labour have made it even more difficult, so we have to raise our game and be smarter.”
‘I’ve got skin in the game, it’s personal. It’s not a label slap.’ How much? ‘We’re in excess of £20 million’
Some of these increases, he thinks, are a long time coming. “It’s an industry that’s been underpaid for a long time. Chefs, sommeliers, maître d’s, mixologists … they’re like athletes, they want it, they’re in demand. You need to understand their worth.” Fine, but won’t prices go up for customers? “Then you have to pivot, you have to divert.” In the Ramsay group, that means “we’re diminishing the front of house in fast casual, and going to doing online ordering because the generation now don’t want to talk and order.”
But these concerns won’t touch this project, where expense has not been spared. And he’s excited to do it in London, “one of the most diverse, melting pot culinary cities. I mean, Gymkhana. Two stars, to go and have butter chicken, it’s just …” His words run out. “I think London’s thriving.”
This Lucky Cat is Ramsay’s fourth worldwide, and the second here. The first, in Grosvenor Square, opened in 2019 and its pan-Asian, non-region specific approach was derided on social media. Ramsay blew up at the time, making headlines. Looking back, did it seem unfair? “Oh my god, did it. With the cultural appropriation stuff? Terrible. Awful.” But the incident left no lasting mark, and he has no qualms about opening another now. The executive head chef is Michael Howells. Ramsay is not worried about another row. “We spent time in the West Coast in LA. Do you think I’m averse to an incredibly talented Mexican chef running one of the Nobu restaurants? I wouldn’t look at him any different. I’m just excited that kid from Mexico City can execute some of the best Japanese cuisine on the planet. We need to wake up to that … modernisation,” he says. In fact, the main problem he thinks Lucky Cat is looking at is to do with the loos. “There are lots of couples going in there and treating it like the ‘mile high’ bathroom,” he quipped on Jonathan Ross last week. Reportedly too, he lost £2,000 in the first week owing to people stealing the cat-shaped, gold-coloured chopstick rests.
Lucky Cat is an ambitious site, with room for 120 and 360- degree views across the city. “This view, it’s majestic. Oh my god, I was sat here, I had a tear in my eye on the phone to my wife Tana this morning. We’ve had helicopters flying below. It’s weird when the clouds are down there, and we’re up here.”
There will be a feast menu at £185, alongside various cheaper options, including a £35, three-course lunch, and bottomless brunch offered on the weekends. Ramsay wants it to be the city’s buzziest hangout. DJs will play, dancing is expected, there’s a projector for sports. Your favourite influencer’s favourite influencer will be there. “It’s going to have that after-party vibe, especially with the 3am licence,” he says, grinning. A 24-hour licence is on the cards, “but I don’t want to do that until a year down the line.”
But perhaps most important of all will be the Restaurant Gordon Ramsay High. Twenty-seven years after Restaurant Gordon Ramsay opened on Chelsea’s Royal Hospital Road, and 24 years since it was first awarded three Michelin stars — which it still holds — Ramsay is finally opening a second iteration of his modern French flagship. While the Chelsea restaurant is all fine pressed linens and cream-coloured walls, with room for 40, the operation here is almost industrial: great floor-to-ceiling windows, tan stool seats, a charcoal U-shaped table that seats only 12.
