No Reservations: Professional Squatters Occupying Gordon Ramsay’s Restaurant
A group of bougie bums have taken over celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay’s temporarily unoccupied London restaurant, “York & Albany.” The new occupants’ special of the day is chaos, with a heaping side of disorder.
By Bram Teitelman · April 18, 2024
There’s a new reality show taking place in London. Let’s call it ‘Who Wants To Be Annoying To A Millionaire?’ The millionaire in question is celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, the contestants are an anonymous group of squatters, and the show is currently unfolding in real-time at one of Ramsay’s restaurants, Camden’s “York & Albany,” a restaurant and hotel where they’ve set up shop and are refusing to leave. The judges? Perhaps actual judges, and there’s no word on when season one will come to an end.
Ramsay’s kitchen nightmare began as his establishment was temporarily closed while he was waiting to hand over the building after selling it in a multi-million dollar deal. And while he may have sold it to some scrappy upstarts, they were nowhere near as scrappy as the up to six “professional” squatters that moved in.
How do we know they’re professional? Well, The Sun reports that they used Ramsay’s own kitchen appliances to barricade themselves in the building, which takes a certain amount of ingenuity. They also glued the locks shut, which, well pretty much anyone could do. But would an amateur squatter group have an Instagram? These guys sure do.
They also have somewhat of an understanding of the law since they posted a legal notice stating that “any entry or attempt to enter into these premises without our permission is, therefore, a criminal offense as any one of us who is in physical possession is opposed to such entry without our permission,” and that “if you attempt to enter by violence or by threatening violence we will prosecute you.”
And it turns out that the occupation of someone’s non-residential property without their permission isn’t a crime in the UK, so long as no actual crimes, including damaging or stealing the property, are committed. It seemed like fashion crimes were being committed, with the Sun talking to an occupier wearing a compression bandage, a hoodie, and flip-flops, but that wasn’t quite enough to get them to leave.
The group got increasingly bold enough to declare the restaurant an art cafe, stating they’d be serving food to the public and hosting an art exhibit. However, the only thing served was papers, which turned out to be enough to at least get the art collective to leave, which is great information to know the next time an art collective sets up shop in your building.
The collective’s Instagram wishes “those left in the building the best in their endeavors,” which means that justice has yet to be dished out for Ramsay—no word on who’s still in the building or when Ramsay will get his just desserts.