The best TV chef tirades (plus something Gordon Ramsay did)

Don’t mess with these cantankerous celebrity chefs.

Matty Matheson is just one of the many celebrity TV chef ranters. Source: SBS

TV chefs are renowned for a good rant. Blame it on the pressure-cooker environment of cuisine creation, their elevated status in the pop culture bubble or the stream-of-consciousness vacuum that is social media. Or maybe it’s just because sometimes they can be major a-holes. From serial offenders Gordon Ramsay and Anthony Bourdain to the unlikely Martha Stewart and outspoken host of SBS VICELAND's Dead Set On Life Matty Matheson, here are some of the best and worst rants.

Anthony Bourdain tears Sandra Lee a new one

Beware the TV chef caught on Anthony Bourdain’s warpath. Source: SBS

The No Reservations host has never held back from a warts-and-all rant, especially when it comes to celebrity TV chefs (ironically he’s one of them). But he reserves some particularly scathing vitriol for homey cook Sandra Lee because of her reliance on store-bought ingredients, calling her “pure evil.” In a blog post, he fired off this missive:

"This frightening Hell Spawn of Kathie Lee and Betty Crocker seems on a mission to kill her fans, one meal at a time. She Must Be Stopped. Her death-dealing can-opening ways will cut a swath of destruction through the world if not contained.”

Martha Stewart slays Apple, millennials and Gwyneth Paltrow

Martha Stewart is partial to serving up a good rant. Source: PBS

The TV cook and lifestyle doyenne has had her fair share of outbursts over the years. Apple copped it when Stewart dropped her iPad and partially smashed the glass screen, with the tech giant apparently not reacting kindly to her multi-tweet rant.

“I cannot believe that Apple Public Relations is mad at me for tweeting about my iPad and how to get it fixed! Steve Jobs gave it to me!” she tweeted.

She’s also berated millennials, saying, “They are living with their parents. They don’t have the initiative to go out and find a little apartment and grow a tomato plant on the terrace.”

And Stewart isn’t a fan of actor-turned-lifestyle guru and Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow, making this statement: “She just needs to be quiet. She’s a movie star. If she were confident in her acting, she wouldn’t be trying to be Martha Stewart.” Burn!

Matty Matheson tells racist fans where to go

Matty Matheson tells racist fans they’re not welcome to follow him on Instagram. Source: Instagram / @mattymatheson

After he put up a “pro-immigration post and anti-racism post” on his Instagram feed, the Canadian TV chef and host of SBS VICELAND’s Dead Set On Life had a negative response from some of his pro-Trump followers. In his comfortable topless-and-tattooed state, he addressed them in a video titled “A message to my racist followers”, telling them to “stop following me. We’re not the same... You’re a f***ing disgusting racist human so please hit the ‘all unfollow’ button or whatever. Yeah, [I’m] really bummed you know. You guys are f***ed. I’m not anti-America, I love America, I love a lot of Americans. Trump, not a good guy, never gonna be a good guy.” Couldn’t be clearer than that.

 

Gordon Ramsay’s misogynistic attack on Tracy Grimshaw

Ramsay has built his career on - professional and novice alike - on shows like Hell’s Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares. But he reached a new low with his bizarre 2009 misogynistic targeted at A Current Affair host Tracy Grimshaw.

At an appearance at the Melbourne Good Food and Wine Show, he allegedly implied Grimshaw was a lesbian and later admitted to comparing her to a pig as he projected an image of a naked woman on all fours with swine features.

Further commenting on her appearance, he said, “I had an interview with her yesterday. Holy crap, she needs to see Simon Cowell’s Botox doctor.” During his interview with Grimshaw, he made fun of her facial mole quipping, "Is that a wart? It looks like your little sister's on your lip." Charming.

 

Matt Moran’s war on waste

Filming a cooking segment in 2011, the restaurateur and reality cooking show regular lost it big time when a TV crew member threw his fastidiously plated meal in the bin to reset for the next take.

"Why are you throwing that away for? I've just spent half an hour putting that perfectly on a plate, you come along and throw it in the f***ing bin... I don't care if you're f***ing resetting, there's nothing wrong with that food; that's being wasteful... It could have fed one of these guys; it could have fed me. Get it out of the bin and put it back on the f***ing plate... I don't want f***ing anything to do with it, get yourselves another chef,” he yelled before storming off.

It turns out it was all an ingenious and pretty realistic stunt designed to promote anti-food waste non-profit OzHarvest.

Gianfranco Vissani wants to kill vegans

Meat-loving Italian TV chef Gianfranco Vissani is not a fan of vegans. Source: IN ONDA/LA 7

The popular meat-loving Italian TV chef and restaurateur set off a social media firestorm in 2016 with his inflammatory comments about vegans during a TV interview. He was discussing molecular gastronomy when he kicked off, saying, “Vegans are like [members of] a sect, they’re like Jehovah’s Witnesses... What would I do with the vegans? I would kill them all.” Ouch.

“Paleo” Pete Evans eviscerates paleo “fake news”

Media coverage of Pete Evans’s paleo cooking has left a bad taste in the chef’s mouth. Source: Seven Network

Evans has proved a controversial figure in his preaching of the paleo diet, including advising an osteoporosis sufferer to stop eating dairy products and promoting bone broth formula as a substitute for breast milk. In a lengthy rant on Instagram earlier this year, Evans slammed the “fake news” media for spreading lies about him and paleo. 

“Thank you to all the 'F grade' journalists that continue to put out FAKE NEWS stories about Paleo or myself. Each and every time you create a lie, in your poorly researched article or sensationalist headline, you continually promote a paleo & low carb, healthy fat lifestyle approach to an even larger audience than we could have reached ourselves!” Take that, fake news.

 

Season 3 of Dead Set On Life airs Mondays at 8pm on SBS VICELAND.

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