Marco Pierre White is in the lobby of the Soho Grand hotel in New York,
signing for breakfast. He puts it on room 320 – the only problem is that
he’s in room 322. He is the worse for wear after a night on the sambuca –
“the house cocktail”, as he calls it. It’s an aniseed spirit that is lit,
extinguished (with the palm of the hand) and shot – in one. Sure, it’s
against local fire regulations, and everything that is good and decent. But
this is Marco Pierre White. And the burns from last night don’t appear to be
bothering him.
White is in Manhattan promoting The Devil in the Kitchen – the American
edition of his autobiography, White Slave. His publicists at Bloomsbury are
selling him as the original rock-star chef. The one who made Gordon Ramsay
cry – who would string up his kitchen juniors by their aprons before dumping
them in the dustbin. This morning he’s doing a live cooking demo on the
Martha Stewart Show. If he can keep his breakfast down long enough.
Last night went wrong. It always goes wrong when White suggests “the house
cocktail”. The heat of the shot glass threw one member of the drinking party
into a blind panic, and she smashed her hand down onto the table. There was
flaming sambuca everywhere. White got burnt and had to ram his hand into a
bucket of ice-cold water, then bandage it up in a table napkin, before
somebody rolled him into a cab.
This morning, somehow, he still manages to look handsome – despite a grey
demeanour and a tangle of greasy hair. He hasn’t spent any time at the
mirror, but it wouldn’t have hurt – the Martha Stewart Show is, after all,
the American standard for gracious domestic living. White’s turbot with
citrus and cilantro will sit beside a leaf-covered candleholder how-to, and
a tip on using old navigational charts as giftwrap.
In the taxi to the studio, White is quiet. Perhaps because, even though he was
the youngest, and first British-born, chef ever to win three Michelin stars,
he gave them back. And that was 1999. He hasn’t cooked since – not even at
home. As he says, where’s the adrenaline fix
in cooking a family dinner for five? The Martha Stewart Show is his first-ever
cooking demo. And then he’s flying home to present Hell’s Kitchen – the show
that transforms celebrities into adrenaline-fuelled line cooks. Today, White
turns into a TV chef. Which is odd, given that he used to reckon he couldn’t
imagine anything worse. “As a TV chef, you dilute your currency,” he once
said. But that was when he was still in his kitchen, and he still had a
“currency” to dilute. Things have changed. The money might have had
something to do with it. But so did the fact that it was Hell’s Kitchen, a
show created for Gordon Ramsay. They’re in the middle of a protracted legal
battle. They can’t stand each other. This is personal.
The staff at the Martha Stewart prep kitchen, on West 26th Street, are
thrilled to be cooking with one of the world’s great chefs. But White
specified a 10lb turbot – the turbot he finds on his board is 5lb.
“Well, we’re down in the first, aren’t we?” he says, quietly.
White loves a boxing metaphor. “Sorry, chef,” says the commis responsible.
White doesn’t like to be called “chef” – you’re only a “chef” when you’re
running a kitchen, and White doesn’t run a kitchen any more. This is not
going well.
In White Heat, his manifesto on food, White wrote “Without fear, no
discipline”. But he doesn’t create fear by shouting. Not any more. Not since
he cut up a chef’s whites while he was still wearing them. And not since he
poured a tureen of soup down a chef’s pants – followed by the croutons (even
in full temper, White liked to do things properly). Because the staff in the
Martha Stewart kitchen have heard the stories, White doesn’t shout. He
doesn’t need to.
He used to raise his voice – now he raises his eyebrows instead. And he’s got
a lot to raise his eyebrows about. The oranges are too f***ing big, the
fennel too f***ing old, the knife is too f***ing sharp. However, after some
frantic ringing round, the commis has managed to lay his hands on a 25lb
fish. “Too f***ing big,” says White, without looking up. “And are these the
only pans you’ve got? They’re fine, but f***ing really?” After 30 minutes of
quiet, interrupted by the occasional barked instruction, White’s shoulders
drop. He is ready, and has thought of a reference he’s going to make to
Martha Stewart’s jail term for insider trading. He’ll use a pinch of sel de
cuisine (French for kitchen salt). “Get it – cell de cuisine!”
One of the sous chefs tells how, apparently, Martha had to give a urine sample
in jail, and tested positive for nutmeg. They laugh. For the first time
since White arrived, they really laugh.
Martha Stewart is known for being selfish with the camera. She has a knack of
bringing everything back to her. But White handles her well, and speaks when
he’s spoken to. And as he tells his cheese story (“I picked up the first
cheese… Not right! With all my might I threw it against the wall. It stuck
to the tiles… ” etc), he tips his pan forward, allowing the camera to pick
up the way he turns his potatoes. He’s a natural.
The floor manager holds up a sign with a big No 1 on it. “I’m not sure if I’ve
got one minute left, or if they’re marking me 1 of 10,” says White.
It feels warm and natural. In the world of the TV chef, it’s what will make
White different. Cooking on television is about making the food look pretty
– and White’s food looks as pretty as a picture. But, if White
is about anything, he’s about taste. And if God made anything tastier than
the turbot with citrus and cilantro, he’s keeping it to himself.
In the green room, White pulls off his Martha apron. When he arrived at JFK
two days ago, he was all Savile Row bespoke and button-down braces; now he’s
changing into a T-shirt and deck shoes. White has gone native. He loves the
New York state of mind. It reminds him of when he first moved from Leeds to
London, to work at Le Gavroche. “All I had was £7.36, a box of books and a
bag of clothes,” he says. “I was a second-class citizen. I love the
immigrant mentality.”
He’s doing a book signing at Borders with Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain,
two New Yorkers who have worked the “TV chef” thing. Bourdain is famous for
everything but food. His heroin habit, for instance. And the fact that he
smokes two packets of cigarettes a day, which must have made it easier to
eat cobra – beating heart, blood, bile and all – and warthog anus, on the
Travel Channel. If his brasseries are popular, it’s not because of his food.
Batali is a huge brand in the US. And that means he employs his own brand
manager. He wears orange plastic clogs, even on the red carpet. “Because all
that matters,” says Batali, “is they remember me.” Which they do. Just look
at his profit margin.
As Bourdain says, “Mario is every man’s dream – a whore who can cook.”
Bourdain and Batali are there for White. White is their hero, and they say as
much on the book jacket of The Devil in the Kitchen. They were inspired by
his rough, instinctive approach in White Heat. “Use your fingers,” it said.
“I don’t care if you burn them. You weren’t given fingers not to burn them.”
White engaged with food in a new way. He made food sexy again.
“I wish I could describe to you what an amazingly religious experience White
Heat was for me,” says Bourdain. “From the moment my chef pals and I got a
look at it – and at photos of the man himself, in all his haggard,
debauched-looking, obsessively driven glory – we dreamt of nothing more than
to be just like him. White Heat was the first real hint we could be proper
chefs and not just look like Paul Bocuse.”
White’s gift to cooking was to take classic French cuisine and reassemble it so
that each ingredient tasted, distinctly, of what it was. “Take his lemon
tart,” says Heston Blumenthal, the Michelin-starred chef who worked under
White. “He served it on its own. It was so perfect it didn’t need
accompaniment. And his oysters with tagliatelle and caviar – he would only
do one per table. He couldn’t do larger numbers without compromising the
quality. With Marco it was only ever about the food.”
But now that he’s a restaurateur worth an estimated £50m, he’s selling food at
more democratic prices. It’s all about margin. And, yes, he is serving
burgers and pizzas, but they’re quality burgers and pizzas. If only he can
get used to the idea of putting ketchup on his tables.
The audience at the book signing want to know how Batali met White – when they
were working in the kitchen at the Six Bells public house in the King’s
Road. “The first thing that Marco asked me to do was to pick up two 50lb
bags of potatoes,” remembers Batali. “He lifted them – and looked really
good. But I lifted one bag, about two-thirds of the way up, and I just
collapsed. He was proving a point. It was that kind of kitchen.”
But it was also a kitchen with big ideas.
“Marco would go down to the wine shop and have the menu translated into
French,” says Batali. “He couldn’t actually speak French. He still can’t,
whatever he says.” But the important thing is that he was serving écrevisses
in a reduced lobster sauce, in a London pub, in 1984. He was making beurre
blanc, and a deep-green basil purée, and bleeding the one into the other. “I
had never seen anyone draw f***ing pictures with sauces before,” says
Batali. “It changed my life.”
There were good days – and bad days. “It was like the Martha Stewart Show,”
says Batali. “You can hear Martha say, ‘Who put the zucchini here?’ Then two
people with little headsets say, ‘Who put the zucchini there? I’m sure
everybody was told not to put the zucchini there.’ And then Martha says, ‘I
prefer the zucchini here.’ Within two minutes, a delicate rain is a full-on
storm, with people screaming, ‘The zucchini never goes there!’ That’s how it
was in Marco’s kitchen.”
Their working relationship came to an end over a pan of risotto. “Marco
grabbed it,” says Batali, “and said, ‘Not enough salt.’ So I added a little
bit more salt, and a bit more cheese, and he tried it again. ‘This still
sucks!’ he shouted. That’s when the pan hit me in the chest. I didn’t feel
good about myself. I knew the risotto was perfect, but for some reason I
still believed what he was saying. Anyway, I threw two big handfuls of salt
into his beurre blanc and stormed out.”
But the pair are friends again. And Batali has invited White over to dinner at
Del Posto, his two-star restaurant in the Meatpacking District. In the taxi,
White’s publicist pulls out the review of the book in The New York Times. It
ends: “[White] may have been one of the most disagreeable bastards ever to
command a kitchen brigade, but in the same guileless, unfiltered way in
which he cursed out sous chefs, he’s told one hell of a story.” White is
delighted.
The table at Del Posto is ready, but White isn’t. He’s too busy flirting. The
hat-check girl, in a very Woody Allen way, is also an artist. White points
out that he’s a patron of the arts (which he is), and that I’m an art
critic (which I’m not). The hat-check girl’s interest is understandably
aroused. It’s complicated. And it gets more complicated when it transpires
she’s a lesbian.
It’s all terribly innocent, but White loves to flirt. As long as the woman
doesn’t flare at the waist, or have thick ankles. But he also likes a woman
with “a big rack”. It’s a rare combination, and it narrows down his options.
As does the fact that, technically, he’s still married – to Mati, a
hot-headed Spaniard. She’s done it all, from confronting him in his
restaurants to tipping his hunting trophies onto the pavement. All, it
seems, to little effect.
Batali, finally, gets White to the table. He brings out new-season ramps –
tiny, wild leeks – and lardo. The cured pork fat, perfumed with rosemary, is
from Colonnata. Batali is known for his ingredients, and everyone knows it.
When his LA pizza place was robbed, they didn’t make off with the till. They
took the prosciutto. And tonight he’s out to impress White. The first 15
dishes are, I think, starters.
Batali spent the morning playing golf with the mayor of New York. He let the
mayor tee off first: “Then I put my ball next to his, and sat in the golf
cart talking about liquor licences,” he says. But he had set the video for
the Martha Stewart Show. “And for the record, dude,” he says, leaning
forward, “real chefs don’t let themselves be branded with the Martha Stewart
apron. That’s for bankers and wankers.” Maybe the resentment
over the risotto still lingers.
Dinner is reconvened at Esca – Batali’s fish restaurant in the heart of the
theatre district. And, on the terrace, talk turns to The London, Gordon
Ramsay’s new restaurant on West 54th Street. Reviews have been mixed, but
most critics have deemed the food overworked, and a little too haute. “Good
for 1980s three-star in Paris,” says Batali, “but this is New York. It will
be closed by Christmas.” White doesn’t smile.
Bourdain is friends with Ramsay, and wants the two to make up. After all, they
share a history – Ramsay worked at Harvey’s, White’s restaurant in
Wandsworth, for nearly three years. They also share a gesture (a fist
placed, thumb first, against the solar plexus, and pushed away, repeatedly,
for emphasis), and an odd verbal tic. They say “Yes?” as a sentence. But
whatever binds them, more pushes them apart. They fell out, for the first
time, over the theft of a reservations book. Ramsay was running Aubergine,
in London, and began to worry that the restaurant’s backers were planning to
sack him and install White. And when the reservations book – with all its
contact numbers – was stolen, Ramsay insinuated that White was somehow
responsible. The police were involved, and White was livid.
Then Ramsay went and talked to the press. When he was asked about White’s
decision to hand back his Michelin stars, he was quoted as saying “[Marco]
is a great chef, but he’s stopped playing. It’s exactly like a footballer
deciding to go into management – and we know deep down inside that great
footballers never make great managers.” When Ramsay turned up at White’s
third wedding with a TV crew, it was the final straw. “I cut the umbilical
cord,” says White.
It was around that time that White and Ramsay booked in for lunch at The Fat
Duck, Blumenthal’s restaurant in Bray. It was an unhappy coincidence. “Marco
said, ‘What’s Gordon doing here?’ ” remembers Blumenthal.
“I said, ‘He’s having lunch.’ Marco said, ‘Ask him to leave.’ I said, ‘You ask
him to leave.’ Marco said, ‘I would do the same for you.’ I said, ‘I
wouldn’t put you in that position.’ But I agreed to talk to Gordon. I asked
him to have a quiet word with Marco outside. He kindly agreed.”
“As Gordon walked outside I told my manager to come and get me if it got
physical. I’m not completely sure what was said but it got quite heated.
Apparently Gordon said Marco was jealous. Marco laughed and said Gordon only
owned a tiny proportion of Aubergine anyway. What was there to be jealous
of? Gordon called Marco a fat bastard, and said he had ruined his day. To
which Marco said something like, ‘I suggest you sue me for loss of
enjoyment.’ ”
Then, in The New Yorker in March, Ramsay went and confessed to having “stolen”
the reservations book at Aubergine, claiming that he’s still got it at home.
So White decided to sue Ramsay for malicious falsehood. On Maundy Thursday,
giving Ramsay the Easter weekend to sweat it over, he delivered papers into
Ramsay’s hands. “More threatening that way,” says White.
Bourdain, sensibly, changes the subject.
But White won’t let him. “Gordon couldn’t lie straight in bed,” says White.
Before the revelations about the reservations book, White was measured about
Ramsay. Not any more. “He’s like Bundy, the serial killer. Why did he feel
the need to mention the book? He couldn’t help himself.” His favourite
put-down is from the Mark Antony eulogy on the death of Julius Caesar.
“Brutus is an honourable man,” he smiles. With this much wine on the table,
it’s wasted.
When Batali did Manhattan with Blumenthal, things got out of hand. Batali
ended up biting Blumenthal’s fingers – and refusing to let go. Blumenthal,
who is a trained kick-boxer, wasn’t trained for that and had to pull Batali
off by the nostrils. You can be sure that “the house cocktail” was
involved somewhere along the line.
When the pink snapper arrives, White rips off its head. He stuffs it into his
jacket pocket and forces me, and everybody else, to touch it. “Don’t be
shy,” he says. “Your mother wasn’t.” He then cuts off the pocket and
presents it to Batali as a momento. White is in New York to cash in on the
elbows-out kitchen machismo of shows like Iron Chef. But we’re not in some
spit-and-sawdust joint. Esca is midtown, and polite. The diners look
uncomfortable.
Batali suggests we adjourn to The Spotted Pig, his Michelin-starred pub in the
West Village. Well, the Walt Disney version of a pub. The staff have been
pixie-dusted until they remember that “everybody understands a smile”. The
result is a better class of clientele. In the snug, there’s Bobby “Bacala”
Baccalieri, a soldier in the Soprano organisation. And in the members’
lounge is Jay-Z. “Who is Jay-Z?” asks White. He’s a rapper, dating Beyoncé.
“Who is Beyoncé?” asks White. There’s something endearing about his cultural
reference points. Whether it’s Bernard Manning, the comedian, or Escoffier,
the father of modern cookery, they are all in the past. He likes the old
ways.
The waiters push by, carrying bowls of washing-up on their heads. “One
Michelin star?” says White. “Shows how Michelin has changed. I
did the right thing, getting out when I did.”
White doesn’t draw his curtains – he likes to wake up naturally. Especially
when he’s back in the countryside of England. He’s come to Longleat, the
Wiltshire home of Lord Bath, to relax. But whether or not it’s something to
do with his attention-deficit disorder, he’s not very good at relaxing, and
you can’t help thinking that a lie-in would be a good idea. By 6am he’s
hammering on my bedroom door, and pestering me to come for a drive around
the estate.
Mati has filed for divorce – it’s official. It was all over the papers
yesterday, and White came to Longleat to escape. The Daily Mail is on the
front seat of the car, opened at the page headlined “Boiling Over”. But
White doesn’t seem concerned. “The article says ‘famously volatile’ under
Mati’s photograph. But it says ‘Marco claims to have mellowed’ under mine.
You know, I rather like that.”
White has come out of it all rather well. “I can’t talk about this on or off
the record,” he says.
“It will affect the case.” So instead he talks “hypothetically”. “If your
dream in life is to have a house in the country, and a family, and hens,
then that’s your dream. If [your partner’s] dream is to live in the town,
for example, your relationship is never going to work.” White, for future
reference, loves the country. And he has always wanted hens. Mati likes the
town. She wanted to get rid of their place in West Sussex because she didn’t
like the insects.
He still lives with Mati, and their daughter, Mirabelle, in Holland Park. But
their lives are, essentially, separate. If she’s in Frankie’s, he’s in
Luciano. If she’s in Luciano, he’s in Drones. Texting is their main means of
communication. As he puts on his seat belt, he gets the first text of the
day – the car won’t start, and she wants transport for her and Mirabelle.
But the text is polite, and ends in “please”. Considering it was her who
filed for divorce, she seems calm.
White believes in fulfilling his duty to his children. In his eyes, that means
remaining married to Mati. “When the boys have left school then, fine, let’s
go our separate ways. But I come from a broken home. I know the effects it
has on the children. I lived it. I saw my father remarry and that’s why I
didn’t speak to him for 13 years. I was too damaged as a child. That’s why I
now work seven days a week to hold it all together. To create security for
the family.”
White is adamant that there’s been no philandering. “I sit down and have lunch
with a bird and I’m having an affair with her? Come on. Let’s be honest.
Have I ever been snapped walking out of an apartment or a restaurant with a
bird? There’s only one person saying I’m having an affair. Nobody else.” He
adds: “Let’s just say I don’t screw the staff. I did it once. Mati. [She was
his bar manager at Canteen.] And look what happened. A 15-year sentence.”
The decree absolute has yet to be granted, but White won’t contest the
divorce. “Let’s not waste the children’s money,” he says. But he won’t agree
to a straight 50/50 split with Mati. “Fifty per cent of what?” It will take
one hell of a lawyer to work out what Marco Pierre White actually owns.
“What do you mean, I’m a slippery f***er?” he says with a smile. “It’s
simple. I’ve portioned a lot of pie in my life. There’s the pie. We can get
eight portions out of it – if it’s a busy service, we can get 10 portions.
I’m good at portions.”
White drives to the safari park. But luckily for the animals of Longleat, he’s
come without his gun. When I first met White, he was shooting five times a
week – but he’s only shot five times this year. With Guy Ritchie – and even
Ritchie has gone off killing. “He’s taken up tai chung, or whatever it’s
called,” says White.
Not that White is troubled by killing per se. It’s just the scale of it. When
you see 1,000 birds shot in an afternoon, it can change you. Now he shoots
deer instead.
He’s driving through the wolf enclosure when the mobile goes. It’s Viscount
Weymouth, the son of Lord Bath, telling him he’s late for lunch – and 25
guests are waiting. The only problem is that White is in a queue making its
way, at a regulation 3mph, through an awful lot of wolves. Viscount Weymouth
gives him permission to go off-road. White doesn’t need telling twice.
That’s when I remember. White doesn’t drive. He employs Mr Ishi to do it for
him. He’s never had a lesson, which is why he is using the handbrake to
turn. Thankfully, there’s no reversing involved – White doesn’t know how to
reverse. It’s painless, until White pushes in at the front of the queue –
and revs his engine until the man in the Ford Galaxy lets him in. We’re
close to a road-rage incident in a safari park.
At the house, the sideboard is weighed down with a buffet of lamb curry and
tomato salad. As the tour picks its way through the lunch guests, White goes
to sit in the corner. But two old ladies notice him. When Hell’s Kitchen
hits our screens, it will be even harder for him to escape.
On the drive back to London, White works the phone. It’s a thing of beauty.
When he needs to, he scribbles things down on the back of cigarette packets
– he’s got no diary. But he never forgets. Nor does he have an e-mail
address. It’s because of his dyslexia. It doesn’t really affect his
day-to-day life, except that he’s still convinced he’s building a pagoda in
Frankie’s in Chiswick. Nobody has the heart to tell him it’s a pergola.
He loves doing the deal. And, on the phone, you can hear it. There are deals
with P&O about a restaurant in the new ship Ventura. And two new
restaurants at Chelsea FC. He’s developing the Blenheim Palace provisions
range (“we love a toff,” as he says), for sale through Sainsbury’s. And he’s
setting up outposts in Jamaica, Las Vegas, Shanghai and Dubai. Oh, and
Sandbanks, Dorset.
Back in London, over dinner, I admire one of his sculptures. He rings the
sculptor and has her drive – across London – to bring me one just like it.
Even though she hasn’t finished it yet, and, technically, it’s not White’s
to give. But anyone who knows him knows that his business strategy is based
on The Godfather. To quote Don Corleone talking to Bonasera: “Some day, and
that day may never come, I will call upon you to do me a service in return.”
And, for the sculptor, that day just came. That’s where Ramsay went wrong –
he didn’t realise the way his mentor worked. In all his New York interviews,
White made a point of raving about Batali’s restaurants. He was repaying a
favour. To be welcomed into the world of Marco Pierre White, it’s worth
reading The Godfather trilogy to the end.
White was offered the original Hell’s Kitchen, but turned it down. He then
turned it down again, after he saw it presented by Ramsay. “It was all
shouting, swearing and screaming,” says White. “Where was the food?” When
Ramsay went off to present American Hell’s Kitchen, ITV drafted in Gary
Rhodes and Jean-Christophe Novelli. But neither chef had the personality –
or the edge – to carry off the programme. The format looked dead in the
water. Until White agreed to have a cup of tea with ITV. “And they were
honest,” says White.
“I liked their honesty.” But White had his own reasons for doing the
programme, and stipulated that it had to be “educational, inspiring and
interesting. I’ve got a lot to prove. That I can still do it. I don’t expect
to be as quick as I used to be. And, let’s be honest, the machinery’s
changed. Everything is electronic. I still think of Robot Coupes. And
Kenwood Chefs. The world has changed. It’s like Nigel Mansell saying,
‘Right, I’m going to enter a grand prix again’.”
ITV want to see the White who used to send commis chefs to stand in the
corner. On one night – one particularly rough night – he ran out of corners.
And that’s when he started on the diners. When one husband, impatient at how
long his soufflé was taking, threatened not to pay the bill, White held his
wife’s mink coat hostage.
But White has his own ideas about how to make Hell’s Kitchen his own. “Gordon
would bollock the chefs in the morning. Make them stand there, and then hit
them – verbally. That’s not a great way of starting a day, is it? I say, if
you’ve had a rough service, let’s clear down, have a glass of wine, and
discuss the day there and then. Tomorrow is another day.”
For White, it’s all about doing it better than him. He declares “interests” in
14 restaurants. Ramsay – in the form of Ramsay Holdings – has 15
restaurants. “But,” says White, “which ones does he actually own?” Nobody
really knows. Hell’s Kitchen is just another chance for them to prove who is
the better chef. And, after the series is finished, White will talk to his
lawyers about the matter of the reservations book. “Let’s watch it unravel,”
says White. “Why rush things?”
