REACH BEYOND THE STARS

STORY CHRIS DWYER

Celebrity chef Marco Pierre White changed the way the world thought of British food, inspired thousands of young cooks – and then folded up his three-star apron. Seventeen years on, in an exclusive interview, he talks about the Michelin Guide, what the stars mean to him, and his current relationship with Gordon Ramsay.

Anyone who’s familiar with Marco Pierre White seems to have an opinion about him. Some think he’s a genius, while others think he’s a sell-out. The mercurial one-time enfant terrible of

British cuisine – who first surfaced during a time when “British” and “cooking” were seen as a contradiction in terms – polarises like few others. It’s not difficult to see why. Intense, passionate, loyal, hugely driven with a talent of which few could dream, he is also maddeningly contradictory and often bewilderingly cavalier about how he chooses to use his sublime skills.

The venue where I meet White is at Cape Lodge, a beautiful boutique hotel in the Margaret River region, Western Australia’s food and wine destination. Just a three-hour drive from Perth, the region is hosting the annual Margaret River Gourmet Escape (www.gourmetescape.com.au), a three-day festival of gourmet dinners, markets, appearances, and more. White is among the all-star line-up.

In person, White is utterly courteous, relaxed and clearly loving his time in this “special corner of the world”, as he calls it. Smoke from a steady stream of Marlboro Reds drifts upwards from his lakeside seat. His famous voluminous hair remains unkempt and those piercing eyes, which won and broke so many hearts back when White was the first culinary rock star, as immortalised by the late photographer Bob Carlos Clarke, are as intensely focused as ever.

He starts by talking about his humble beginnings and his roots – a subject he comes back to time and again. “Cooking was a working class profession. The first kitchen I walked into in 1978, everyone in that kitchen, including me, came from a council estate,” says White. “When I started, I just followed in my father’s footsteps. Had my father been a miner, I would have gone down the mines but he just happened to be a chef in the hotels and that’s where I was sent.”

White recalls how he found a book, Egon Ronay's Guide to Hotels and Restaurants in Great Britain, at St George Hotel in Harrogate. “I started flicking through it and what I noticed was that restaurants had stars and the best restaurant in Britain, according to Egon Ronay, was The Box Tree in Ilkley. I went back into the

kitchen and thought ‘I want to be a cook in the best restaurant in Britain’.”

Even as a teenager, White already had a clear vision and focus that belied his age. “As a young boy of 17, I had a dream to replicate a restaurant called Lasserre – it had the ultimate, three stars from Michelin and five red knives and forks,” says White.

REACHING FOR MICHELIN STARS That dream was to set into action a chain of events and a meteoric rise to the pinnacle of his profession. Following The Box Tree, he worked first as a commis with Albert and Michele Roux at Mayfair’s legendary Le Gavroche. He then became head chef and co-owner of Harveys at just 24 (where a young Gordon Ramsay was his apprentice) and nine years later, he became the youngest chef ever to be awarded three Michelin stars at The Restaurant Marco Pierre White in the former Hyde Park Hotel.

Along the way, he also became the prototype for the chef-as-rock star inspiring thousands, including Anthony Bourdain and Jason Atherton, to follow in his footsteps. Simply put, he made cooking cool. With three marriages and seemingly countless assignations, he also became a tabloid favourite.

Fellow British chef Rowley Leigh, chef and restaurant consultant of The Continental Hong Kong said, with a twinkle in his eye, that White was a “scoundrel”. When I put this to White, he smiles in return and says: “If he wants to say that I’m a naughty boy – like most of us, whether we’re journalists or cooks – we’re all naughty when we’re young. It takes a long time for us to grow up. Metaphorically speaking, I’ve just stepped out of short trousers.”

“IT TAKES A LONG TIME FOR US TO GROW UP. METAPHORICALLY

SPEAKING, I’VE JUST STEPPED OUT OF SHORT TROUSERS.”

— Marco Pierre White

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01 Peppered fillet steak with French fries is one of White's recipes

02 Another White recipe is Gravlax smoked salmon with dill cucumber mustard dressing

03 White playing the role of villain-in-chief on Australian MasterChef

04 White at the annual Margaret River Gourmet Escape in 2015

After achieving his ultimate goal of three Michelin stars and five red knives and forks, White decided to leave at the top, to the amazement of the culinary world. “Once I’d realised this dream, in 1999, it was time to go and hang up the apron. I realised ‘Marco, you’re being judged by people who have less knowledge than you’.”

One extraordinary fact that remains true to this day is that White has never eaten in a Michelin-starred restaurant in France. “It was really important to me to be home-bred, to prove that the English could do it. Winning three stars is without question the most exciting gastronomic journey in the world, but retaining them is boring.”

Today, White’s view of Michelin is less than favourable. “Michelin devalued their own currency, in my opinion. They’re in the business of selling tires. I don’t want to have 18 courses and little canapés on the plate; it bores me.”

White had many great chefs work under him, most famously Gordon Ramsay, one of the few British chefs to also hold three Michelin stars. The recent relationship between the two has been fractious. “I made a conscious decision to cut Gordon out of my life for the simple reason that he bought a camera crew to my wedding without my knowledge,” says White. “Six months later my children, wife, and family are on a TV show. If Gordon wants to elevate himself through association, then that’s his choice. It depends what value you put on friendship. I put great value on it.”

However, White goes on to suggest that there is potential light at the end of the tunnel. ”I went to a little book signing of White Heat 25 [the 25th anniversary edition of his original cookbook] the other day at Little Black Gallery, where they were selling all the photographs from White Heat. I was told that Gordon had bought four of the images, something that I took as a great compliment. So I took the one down with the cleaver and wrote on the back of it – ‘For the ram, with love, the bull. MPW x’.”

He then confounds things further. “Last time I saw Gordon we spent six hours at the bar on a Virgin flight to New York. Your chef is always your chef. Forever, I will always be Gordon’s chef. He was a young boy when he came to me and spent two and a half years with me and I got him his job at Le Gavroche and assisted him when he went to Paris.”

Mixed messages certainly, but as part of such an elite group of chefs, intense rivalry and fanning the flames of publicity doubtless come as second nature. Today, White’s world is multi-faceted with restaurants bearing his name across the UK and his role as villain-in-chief on Australian MasterChef. He has also spent time cooking for British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (he insisted he wanted to cook for them ‘on the frontlines’ and not back at base). Currently, English film

director Ridley Scott and German-Irish actor Michael Fassbender are both involved in the on-going project to film White’s autobiography, The Devil in the Kitchen.

The destination currently taking up most of his time is the historic English market town of Corsham near Bath, where he is overseeing the renovation of a Victorian hotel. His food will be centre stage. “I just want the food to be a menu that I’d want to eat. Simple as that. Beautiful pappardelle with a ragu of hare or oxtail. Risotto Milanese with braised osso buco. Just real food, generous portions. I want things which are real, I don’t want pictures.”

Seventeen years after hanging up his three-star apron, White is still searching for the final legacy to define him.

“I WANT THINGS WHICH ARE REAL, I DON’T WANT

PICTURES.”— Marco Pierre White

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