Seventeen sea bass arrived this morning under a hot Balearic sun. Each will be filleted, marinated, then cooked over coal. The diners who eventually order them will, presumably, be thrilled by the thought. Gordon Ramsay, the man most taken with the catch, however – whose eyes sparkle when talking about these freshly-hauled branzino – will not be taking a single flaky bite.

But then, deep down, Ramsay is an easy man to please. That’s not the party line, of course. Over the years, the chef has cooked up a trigger-happy reputation, flames and threats his stock in trade. Yet, today, in Ibiza’s newest restaurant, and Ramsay’s latest Hell’s Kitchen, the 58-year-old Scot is in chipper spirits. Not because of the several million euros’ worth of kitchen equipment behind us. Or the fact that this venture represents his 96th global restaurant opening. But due to much smaller things. A regional anise spirit he’s keen to champion. Some locally-procured, finely-carved jamón. Those bass.

“I fell in love with the Balearics many years ago,” says Ramsay. “I was 22 and would come here on these amazing working holidays, as a private chef, while I was getting my arse kicked at some of the best restaurants in Paris. Back then, Ibiza was sort of the sleeping beauty of Europe, and an oasis of produce. It’s where I’d come to dive.”

Consider this latest venture a toe re-dipped. And, while today the island is louder – in every sense of the word – the produce remains peak. The seafood in particular, whether fresh oysters or red shrimp, seems to evoke in Ramsay an almost meditative mood. At this restaurant, Ramsay isn’t the devil we’ve come to expect. The burners aren’t firing. The knives aren’t out. Instead, he’s calmly listing dishes, ten of which will be exclusive to this, the first European Hell’s Kitchen – from a Galician chuletón steak to a Basque cheesecake.

“We can’t do that in Las Vegas [where the first Hell’s Kitchen opened in 2017], or in Washington D.C.,” says the chef. “This one will be unique. It’s also our first step into Europe; we’ll be bringing Hell’s Kitchen to London – there’s no two ways about it.”

In fact, Londoners have already tasted Ramsay’s Ibiza; the chef uses produce from the Mediterranean island at his longest-standing restaurant, Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, on Chelsea’s Royal Hospital Road. “It’s that good,” he says. Given that, in 2025, the eponymous eatery is celebrating 25 years holding three Michelin stars, you have to believe him. “Do you have any idea how hard that is?” says the chef. “It’s like winning the Champion’s League. Every f**king year.”

Slightly snappy, but it soon ebbs. Indeed, Ramsay is remarkably self-effacing, describing that starry restaurant as “a tiny little place in back of beyond Chelsea” and brushes over a night when Tony Blair, Salman Rushdie and Lady Diana were all in for dinner. That London, he claims, has gone; ascended. “When I started, London wasn’t even in the top five. But now? We can rub shoulders with Paris, Milan, New York. We can take on the very best. There’s an energy in London. At the moment, though, the culinary scene is brutal. It’s the most competitive it’s ever been.”

Ramsay knows a thing or two about competition. After injury nixed a promising footballing career, London called and he spent years working with chefs from Albert Roux to Marco Pierre White, developing a deep-rooted feud with the latter. Their rivalry may have simmered in recent years, but with such current interest in culinary-flavoured film and TV – an Anthony Bourdain biopic is currently being filmed – it’s no surprise that Ramsay has fielded calls from production companies wanting him to expand on the conflict.

“They’ve been asking for it,” he says. “Marco vs. Gordon. Gordon vs. Marco. But I’m not f**king done yet. I’m still at the coal face. I’m 58, not 78, and I’ve promised myself that I won’t become old and boring, philosophising that ‘it wasn’t like that in my day’. When I hear the Raymond Blancs and Marco Pierre Whites of this world say that, I think: ‘You f**king hypocrites!’ I was there, I know what it was like! The reason I am where I am today is because of the way you treated me. I begged for knowledge and there was a price to pay for that.”

There it is: a taste of Ramsay the brand, the man with the furiously furrowed brow whose televisual outbursts have made him a meme machine. People continue to eat up Hell’s Kitchen, which has survived on US television for 24 seasons (and counting) on a diet of donkeys, plonkers and idiot sandwiches. Ramsay inaugurated the format in Britain in 2004 having made his television debut in the late Nineties on Channel 4 docuseries Boiling Point. Recent years have seen a short film, a feature film and a television series, all starring Stephen Graham, borrow that title.

“I secretly laugh,” Ramsay says. “I don’t think Boiling Point or The Bear would even be available today if it wasn’t for that original Channel 4 show. It’s successful because it’s entertaining. These are passionate stories. Cooking is an emotional thing. It’s prep and pressure, all that build-up for a two-minute devour – an explosion that’ll either make someone’s night, or f**k them off. That’s the jeopardy. But I welcome stuff like The Bear. I think it’s great, and really important for the industry.”

Ramsay’s next TV turn sees him step behind the camera. In October, Knife Edge lands on Apple TV+: eight searing episodes that follow chefs chasing their first Michelin star. It’s well-shot, Ramsay says, but raw. “I wanted to rip the Band-Aid off, give everyone a proper insight. Every single producer on The Bear will be watching it to get ideas for season five – I guarantee it!”

“It’s me, almost like a boxer,” he adds. “Laying my gloves on the canvas and saying f**k it! Now you know. Now you understand. But I’m only producing it. It’s not about controlling it, it’s about showing where the bodies are buried. About having the balls to say: ‘F**k this glossy image! This is the nitty gritty.’ I couldn’t be in it anyway; it’s a conflict of interest. And I don’t want to be – I’m not short of f**king TV shows!”

The project took two years to realise – the same as Hell’s Kitchen Ibiza. There’s an episode set in London, one in Copenhagen, one in a pop-up in a subway station, even a market stall in Mexico City. “They’re desperate for a Michelin star,” says the chef. “[They] have the best tacos you’ve ever tasted.”

Ramsay’s own restaurant empire is vast and methodically mapped. He has an R&D team constantly surveying trends and identifying hotspots, and he cites Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi as two of his current favourite food destinations. Berlin, too, he says is producing several particularly promising chefs. But Ramsay’s current top spot? Melbourne.

“I spent a month there last year, and every night we’d visit a different restaurant. I came across one of the best restaurants I’ve ever eaten in – a Filipino place.” This restaurant, Serai, is so popular it needed Ramsay’s table back after an hour. In that time, he managed to enjoy a dish of flambéed, caramelised bone marrow that he speaks about as adoringly as he does his six children. “That’s where it’s happening: Melbourne. More than anywhere else in the world. Extraordinary.”

This, the chef says, owes partly to the fact that Australia isn’t governed by the Michelin Guide. “They haven’t got the panic, or the fear. It’s just unadulterated, uninterrupted cooking.” Ramsay sees Michelin as a “double-edged sword”. Having held 17 stars, he is the third most Michelin-recognised chef in history, behind Alain Ducasse (21) and Joël Robuchon (31), though he’s long had a problem with how the organisation operates.

“They’ve become a lot more open,” he concedes. “Whether Moroccan or Mexican restaurants, or an incredible Indian restaurant – but that’s the way it should have been. Just look at London, so exciting and multicultural, but if you’d said 25 years ago that we’d have had one- and two-star Indian restaurants, you’d have been laughed at.” Michelin, Ramsay says, has finally begun to re-evaluate itself and broaden its outlook. “The mechanics were distorted but they’re finally aligning themselves with the real world.”

Ramsay’s latest Hell’s Kitchen opens in the Unexpected Ibiza Hotel, formerly the Ushuaïa Tower. Overseeing restaurants in more than a dozen countries, travel has become a huge part of Ramsay’s life. Rather than complain about jet lag, though, the chef embraces the opportunities that come with flitting between time zones – namely, the prospect of always sampling new dishes.

“I actually went to the birthplace of butter chicken,” says Ramsay of a recent trip. “You know, to really get my arse kicked and understand how to make it beautifully. I’m done with all this bullshit of: ‘You can’t cook Indian food as a white guy’. Some of the best chefs in the best Japanese restaurants in LA are Mexican! Good for them. You don’t need to be Italian to make a good pizza.”

It’s the freedom of food. As the wider world attempts to pigeonhole people into ever smaller boxes, Ramsay says chefs’ horizons are only broadening. Do it with respect, and he sees no problem with dabbling in the cuisines and cultures of others. You needn’t be Italian to make a pizza. You needn't be Indian to make a curry. And, as any diner at Ramsay’s new Hell’s Kitchen will tell you, you needn't be a native Ibizan to make the perfect herb-trimmed, coal-fired branzino.

Hell’s Kitchen is open now at the Unexpected Ibiza Hotel, Platja d'en Bossa, Ibiza, theunexpectedhotels.com.

Read more: In conversation with Jason Atherton