Daily Times

Chef and restaurateur Gordon Ramsay will be diving into oceans, hiking through forests and scaling mountains in his pursuit of culinary inspiration in Peru, Laos, Morocco, Hawaii, Alaska and New Zealand.

Food and adventure programming is familiar ground for the British chef as the restaurateur’s 2010 UK series Gordon’s Great Escapes saw the venerable chef explore the food culture of India and Southeast Asia.

National Geographic’s new series ‘Gordon Ramsay – Uncharted’, premiering from Monday at 10pm, will follow Gordon Ramsay interacting with indigenous people around the globe to learn about their cultures, dishes and flavours unique to each location.

Every dish he tastes will inspire a new recipe from scratch, created to represent the heart of that culture. Each episode will conclude with Ramsay challenging himself with a local food legend by his side – putting his newfound skills to the test. For Ramsay, food is the gateway to culture, and every adventure is a portal into the soul of the people and place.

“It has been an amazing journey travelling off the beaten path with National Geographic and connecting with locals to learn and share incredible stories of unique traditions, delicacies and the extreme lengths it takes to harvest native ingredients,” said Ramsay. “I have learned way more filming this series than I have in the last 10 years.”

The adventures – culinary and otherwise – that Ramsay will undertake in the premiere season include trekking through a dense jungle in Laos to sample weaver ant eggs and diving through dangerous waters on the hunt for snails and giant water bugs; hunting for eels with his bare hands using traditional Maori techniques with a local fisherman by his side in New Zealand; working with local foragers to harvest Maui’s deadliest catch with homemade tools and spearfishing with legendary free diver Kimi Werner in Hawaii; climbing a sheer rock face during a snowstorm with a local forager to harvest native herbs in Alaska; rappelling down a raging waterfall to meet with local mushroom hunters in Morocco and hanging off a cliff in pursuit of cactus worms – a delicacy in Peru.

The series, produced by Studio Ramsay, will also air globally in 172 countries and 43 languages. Additional episodes of the series have already been ordered ahead of the premiere, with production set to resume later this year.