If you assumed Gordon Ramsay’s idea of ‘collecting’ was limited to Michelin stars, restaurant empires, and the occasional contestant’s dignity left gently seared on national television, you’d only be partially right. There is, it turns out, a far more sentimental side to the chef lurking beneath the surface – one who amasses menus.

“Ever since I started dating [my wife Tana], we used to go out to restaurants early on [in our relationship], and we’d collect menus. It’s a very shabby thing to do, but I have some of the most extraordinary ones. We always ask for a menu,” he exclusively tells Elite Traveler.

See also: A Guide to All Three-Michelin-Star Restaurants in the UK

Tana, then a schoolteacher, apparently took a more proactive role in this emerging archive. “Tana used to say, ‘should I get the chef to sign [the menu]?’ And I would say, ‘no!’ because back in those days, no one knew who we were,” he admits. “But she would always ask the waiter, ‘would you mind asking the chef to sign it?’”

Now, more than two decades later, that “shabby thing” has evolved into a surprisingly vast archive. Apparently, there are “over about 750” menus in his collection. There are also wine lists – some so ceremonially presented that Ramsay has, on occasion, been “charged for taking them home”.

See also: Are Gordon Ramsay’s Sky-High London Restaurants Worth the Hype?

And yet, despite global expansion, television fame, and the small matter of building one of the most recognizable restaurant portfolios in the world (including opening his 100th restaurant – Bread Street Kitchen at 22 Bishopsgate – a “big, big, big, big” milestone in his career), the ritual has never stopped.

“We still collect them now when we go out,” Ramsay says. “We were in a little place called Mijanès recently, which we always visit at the end of the ski season in March, and we go to this little [restaurant]. We’ve gone two or three times now, and we still look back at those old menus.”

And he’s not alone in his collecting endeavors. His restaurants, in particular Lucky Cat, have their own peculiar form of souvenir economy with customers that visit. “Two and a half thousand [Lucky Cat chopsticks holders] get stolen every week,” he shrugs as he tells me.

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It tracks, really. A man who chooses to do Ironman races for fun (his first in Las Vegas, no less, which he describes as “one of the most competitive culinary playgrounds anywhere in the world”) is not going to be emotionally undone by missing tableware. Still, even by hospitality standards, 2,500 disappearing chopstick holders a week is quite the phenomenon.

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