Celebrity chefs Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver and Gino D’Acampo are among the best-known faces on British television.
With their own restaurant franchises, award-winning shows and lucrative merchandise lines, the culinary stars seem to have the world at their feet.
But the superchefs are not having it all their own way at the moment.
A Gordon Ramsay burger restaurant closed this week following a series of blisteringly bad reviews, with one furious customer calling for the top chef to ‘come and sort it out himself’.
Angry diners complained of ‘bad taste, bad service, bad price and bad everything’ at the Street Burger branch on Kensington High Street.
Ramsay’s former co-star Gino D’Acampo has been embroiled in scandal, with the former This Morning star accused of serious allegations of inappropriate and intimidating behaviour on set.
Meanwhile back in 2022 Jamie Oliver had to close 22 of his Jamie’s Italian restaurants and his new £1 meal series has come under fire after viewers claimed his meals actually cost nearly double the price to make.
With the above in mind, has created an infographic using aggregated TripAdvisor reviews to show the best and worst of the TV chefs’ restaurants…
After working in the notoriously tricky world of hospitality for more than four decades, it’s only to be expected that Gordon Ramsay has some misses as well as hits.
The 58-year-old chef, who is as well known for his fiery temper in the kitchen as he is for his cuisine, has opened more than 50 restaurants over the years.
Ramsay still owns 34 restaurants and bars in the UK alone, including three restaurants inside the prestigious Savoy Hotel on London’s Strand: the Savoy Grill, the River Restaurant and Restaurant 1890.
But his Gordon Ramsay Street Burger on Kensington High Street in west London was a dismal failure, with the burger joint shuttering its doors amid a steady tide of bad reviews from disappointed diners.
Among them, unhappy customers complained of ‘bad taste, bad service, bad price and bad everything’, leading to an overall score of 3.5 (out of five) on TripAdvisor, making the outlet among his worst-rated restaurants.
However, this is not the fiery foodie’s worst score on the site. Scoring an average of just three out of five is the chef’s Street Burger branch in Edinburgh.
The eaterie, which currently has 206 write-ups, has 55 five-star write-ups, 24 four-star, 40 three-star, 53 two-star, and 34 one-star reviews.
Opening in 2021, the restaurant, which marked Ramsay’s first venture in the Scottish city, Street Burger offers a range of burgers, wings, ribs, desserts and both alcoholic and soft drinks.
Among the disappointed diners, one shared their opinion on the Edinburgh eatery in a September 2024 one-star write-up titled: ‘A Kitchen Nightmare so bad we didn’t even get served!’.
They wrote: ‘After getting a table next to the kitchen, we started to appreciate the issues this restaurant has. Service is not existent. An actual Kitchen Nightmare.
‘We then watched a member of the kitchen staff get asked to leave, and had to speak loudly to be heard by each other over the chaos in the kitchen.’
They added that they had to re-order drinks after waiting for 20 minutes. It transpired the machine needed to make their Coke floats was broken. In addition, claimed the reviewer, the chef left the kitchen wearing trousers so low that his posterior was visible to customers.
The write-up concluded: ‘After 26 minutes we walked out. No drinks, no food so can’t comment on either but a thoroughly decent concept utterly ruined by incompetence. I’m a fan of Ramsey places and have eaten in many all over the world but this was an absolute shambles. I’m writing this from another restaurant.’
Another one-star review, simply titled ‘disappointing’, read: ‘I had the chicken burger and it was as tough as old boots! could hardly even cut it with my knife. The service was poor and waited ages for the food so very disappointed when it came. Overpriced for what you get. Won’t return.’
And another customer was left despondent enough to leave a one-star review which said: ‘Very disappointing service and food. There was a long wait between ordering online and the arrival of food/drinks although the restaurant was by no means full. I ordered the chicken and avocado burger which arrived with no chicken!
‘The food was sent back, and a new one prepared. Unfortunately, when eating this new burger there were bones in the chicken. Which was quite surprising. The burger itself was very sloppy and not well seasoned aside from the awful crispy cheese around the side which I couldn’t eat.’
Ramsay has also had a bust up with fellow TV chef Gino D’Acampo – his former co-star on the hit ITV show Gordon, Gino and Fred’s Road Trip.
The Scottish superchef has so far remained silent about the accusations levelled at D’Acampo – and his production company Ramsay Studios did not make the spin-off show featuring only D’Acampo and French maître d’hôtel Fred Sirieix, which aired in December 2024.
But Ramsay’s grievance with D’Acampo allegedly dates back to 2019, when he made no secret of his fury that his then-teenage daughter Tilly was dating D’Acampo’s son Luciano.
Both 17 at the time, the young lovebirds made headlines after meeting on the set of their fathers’ joint ITV food show, Gordon, Gino and Fred: Road Trip, with Ramsay branding the relationship a ‘nightmare’.
His reservations are now thrown into a whole new light after the treasured friendship between the two men soured in recent months, with Ramsay even accused of ‘throwing D’Acampo under the bus’ as the latter battles to save his reputation amid allegations of workplace misconduct.
Indeed Ramsay has not publicly spoken out in support of his former co-star, who is now facing a spate of allegations of inappropriate and intimidating behaviour made by women over a 12-year period – claims he denies.
In fact, the Mail’s Katie Hind reports it was Ramsay himself who raised concerns about D’Acampo’s behaviour two years ago, sparking the demise of their show and, ultimately, their friendship.
Asked about the romance between their children on The Jonathan Ross show, Ramsay branded the situation a ‘f***ing nightmare’, downplaying the romance by saying they were ‘just friends’ before Ross quipped ‘I think they’re more than that’, leading to laughter from the audience.
Gino D’Acampo, who found fame on ITV’s This Morning, currently owns and operates eight restaurants in the UK. But he is currently subject to a huge array of allegations against him which range over a 12 year period.
The Italian TV star, known for his cheeky on-screen persona, is now at the centre of claims from dozens of people who describe his alleged conduct over the past 12 years as ‘distressing,’ ‘unacceptable,’ and even ‘horrendous.’
According to ITV News, at least one production company was aware of repeated complaints from staff members about D’Acampo’s behaviour – yet continued to work with him on further TV projects.
One woman, given the pseudonym Hannah, told ITV News Correspondent Sejal Karia about a disturbing moment during a magazine shoot in 2011.
She alleges that, in front of an entire crew, D’Acampo made an explicit sexual comment, telling her he would ‘like to turn me over and f*** me up the a*** against the kitchen counter,’ leaving her feeling humiliated.
‘I remember a ripple of laughter,’ she recalled, while others ‘looked nervously into their cups of tea.’
Hannah said the incident left her feeling ‘horror’ and ‘shock’ but admitted she was not surprised no one intervened.
D’Acampo has firmly denied all allegations, calling them ‘deeply upsetting.’
Once the golden boy of British cooking, Jamie Oliver, 49, has also not be immune to ill-fortune.
In 2019, his restaurant empire collapsed, taking with it 26 restaurants.
Then in 2022 Oliver was forced to close 22 branches of his Jamie’s Italian franchise, which saw 1,000 staff lose their jobs.
At the time the chef described it as a ‘minor blip’ and insisted ‘We will go again’.
While Oliver has a net worth estimated to be more than £150million, according to Celebrity Net Worth, his latest show has come in for criticism with angry viewers claiming the recipes can’t be made for £1 – the entire basis of the show.
The British chef, 49, released the last episode for his Channel 4 show, Jamie’s £1 Wonders on Monday evening – a budget meal series to combat the cost of living crisis in the UK.
It saw the father-of-five whip up dishes such as Welsh rarebit, stuffed pancakes, feta and tomato pasta, chicken curry and rolled carrot cake, all of which he claims you can create on budget.
Although the show is called ‘£1 wonders’, two of the cook’s recipes came to well over a quid, while his Chinese-style pancakes cost much as £1.72 a portion and serves four.