Celeb chef Gordon Ramsay is notorious for his fiery, cantankerous behavior, but the master chef met his match (and nearly his maker) when a contestant on his Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares tried to knife him.

The TV chef got into a heated argument with one of the guest chefs on the program, and nearly got diced up on his own cooking show.

Gordon (shown above) was threatened with a knife -- and a fork, and probably would've been threatened with a spoon, if there'd been one around -- during an altercation with a hot-tempered, really mad chef named Daniel at a vegetarian eatery in Paris.

Food fight! Er, knife fight!

A source says Daniel "completely lost it," but Gordon eventually calmed him down after grabbing his wrist and telling him to put down the knife.