With seemingly no end in sight in the battle of the egos, it was only a matter of time before the fisticuffs started between Harlan Goldstein and Gordon Ramsay, the most aggressive chefs in Hong Kong.
Okay, Ramsay’s not actually based here, but clearly his new restaurant Bread Street Kitchen desperately needs promoting!
In an apparently spontaneous act, and not at all a pre-planned publicity stunt, Goldstein, who likes to tout himself as Hong Kong’s number-one celebrity chef (let him have it, he’s not even slightly famous anywhere else) called the foul-mouthed Brit out in front of the media today.
He also took the trouble of shaving “chef” into his hair… for no apparent reason we can think of.
“Let’s see if Mr. Ramsay is as big as his mouth is,” Goldstein said, according to a report in the SCMP.
Referencing how Ramsay set up Bread Street Kitchen in the same building as his signature restaurant Gold this year, he added, “I want to show him some love. He’s my neighbour. I want to knock him out.”
Believe it or not, all this testosterone-marinated showboating is actually for a good cause, as New Yorker Chef Goldstein has pledged to donate HKD100,000 to the Little Sisters of the Poor Charity and raise HKD2 million more.
Although Ramsay has yet to respond to the call out, he’ll obviously do it – one, because he’s clearly already agreed to all of this, and two, because he’ll look like a real nasty pasty otherwise.
But if you’re expecting Goldstein to be flattened like a fat American pancake by the lean, mean biathlon-running machine that is Chef Ramsay, don’t count your eggs before they’re scrambled. The former is apparently being trained by four-times Muay Thai World Champion Alain Ngalani.
Here’s the original Facebook call out by Ngalani:
We’ll be looking forward to seeing some high kicks then, Goldie!
And in case you were worried that Hong Kong’s other celebrity chefs would be missing out on this awesome opportunity to get their chubby cheeks into the spotlight, Goldstein has called on Jamie Oliver and Mario Batali to be the referees… because Italian chefs know loads about boxing.
Oh, and he also wants to hold the bout at The Butcher’s Club. Yay, everyone’s tucking in at this table!
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