Age has done nothing to dampen the ramblings of Marco Pierre White, the enfant terrible of the culinary world and the original bad boy of haute cuisine.
When we meet in Titanic, his new restaurant at the Melia hotel in Dubai, he’s explaining how he doesn’t have time for frivolities like e-mail and Facebook before I have a chance to turn on the dictaphone. There are several Marco Pierre White Twitter pages, he tells me, but none of them are endorsed by him. He’s never even been on Twitter, and his battered old Nokia was designed for more utilitarian purposes than modern handsets.
The phone is physical evidence of what quickly becomes apparent when talking to the man. Marco Pierre White comes from another era – one where the values and traditions of gastronomy were based on a few simple principles: pride in your work, respect for your head chef, and most important of all, putting in the hours behind your stove.
White became the youngest chef in the world to be awarded three Michelin stars in 1995, but he quickly tired of living up to his own sky-high expectations and lost faith in the integrity of the Michelin rating system, so on December 23, 1999, he retired from the kitchen and returned his Michelin stars.
How does it feel to be one of, if not the original celebrity chef?
Firstly I don’t like the label ‘celebrity chef’. A lot of chefs aren’t celebrities. Well, they might be celebrities but they are not stars. You don’t have to possess talent to be a celebrity, but to be a star you have to possess talent.
I came from the old world of gastronomy – [Auguste] Escoffier’s world. Chefs weren’t as aspirational in those days as they are today. Young boys and girls went into the kitchens to learn their trade. They didn’t turn up with that dream of being on TV or in magazines. The man who really created it all was Keith Floyd. He was charismatic, he was intellectual, he was confident – he may not have been the greatest chef, but what he did was inspire a nation to want to know more about food.
How did the emergence of celebrity chefs change the profession?
When I was a boy, chefs came from one sector of society – it was a working-class profession; boys from a hard world entering into a hard world. Today, you have boys and girls who are leaving school from every sector of society, which in many ways is a better thing.
Chefs used to be acclaimed. They were these mystical characters. You heard of them but you never saw them. It was a little like the Foreign Legion – as long as you’re prepared to be respectful, keep your head down, do your job, work hard…you’re fine. The first thing you have to learn is how to say, ‘yes chef’. If you can’t say ‘yes chef’ to everything, there is no future for you. It was as hard as nails. Your head chef was a hard man. On the one hand he carried the whip, but in the other hand he had the feather.
Has everything about it changed?
Everything about the industry dates apart from one thing: romance. When you think about the whole relationship with food, with kitchens – it’s quite romantic. If you look at a lot of modern-day restaurants, they are quite often soulless environments – they are quite one-dimensional, and five years down the line they have dated. But the environments that are romantic never go out of date. We still crave romance.
When I was a boy, all bills were hand-written. In my restaurant, we had a calligraphist write out every single bill. When you got your change, every note was brand new – every coin was shiny. There is nothing worse than being given dirty coins and dirty notes. Being told to tap a number into some machine – it just doesn’t fit for me. That’s the modern world.
You retired from the kitchen in 1999. What did you achieve during your time behind the stove?
I realised my dream. As a young boy I had a dream of replicating one of the great French restaurants, and in January 1995 I won my three [Michelin] stars with four knives and forks. My dream was to win three stars and five red knives and forks, so then I started to put my focus on winning them. In 40 years of Michelin in Britain, Harvey’s was the only restaurant to win, still to this day, five red knives and forks and three stars. My obsession wasn’t just food, it was the overall experience of dining in a restaurant at that high level. In January 1998, I got my five red knives and forks.
After all the hard work earning them, why did you give your Michelin stars back?
Winning three stars is the most exciting journey for any chef. To have a dream and to have a vision as a young man and to be given the opportunity to realise that dream…I was a very lucky boy. But once you have won those three stars, it’s quite boring because you have so much at risk. You have your reputation, your livelihood, and therefore it becomes quite systematic. I am of the belief that if you go to a three-star Michelin restaurant, the chef should be behind the stove.
It’s like if Alex Ferguson wasn’t on the touchline every Saturday afternoon for the last 20 years, would Manchester United have delivered what they have delivered? No.
Why did you decide to step away from the kitchen?
I never wanted to live a lie – I didn’t want to be one of those chefs who pretends he is behind the stove when he is not. I didn’t want to question my integrity and everything I had worked at for 22 years. I had done my bit for my industry and I had realised my dream – I was still a young man in my 30s and I wanted to go on and do other things. The first thing was to be kind to myself. I hadn’t been kind to myself for 22 years – I had worked six or seven days a week at the highest level and I just wanted to go and do a bit of fishing.
How has Michelin evolved since then and how do you feel about it today?
Michelin doesn’t really work outside of Europe in my opinion. I have been to Michelin-starred restaurants in America where I have thought: if that’s one-star, there should be another 1,000 restaurants in the UK that have a Michelin star. I grew a bit confused because, for example, Gordon Ramsay used to work for me – he had a Michelin star at Claridge’s and then he had it taken away from him. I know Gordon; I have known him for many years. Lots of my friends have dined in that restaurant, and then it lost its star. People were confused.
What Michelin is saying is that every one-star restaurant in France serves better food than what Gordon did at Claridge’s. I think that the chances of this being right are minimal. Michelin quite happily gives stars to restaurants where they know the chef’s not there. When I was a boy, they gave three stars to chefs who were behind the stove.
When I won my three stars and I walked the head inspector to the door, his last words to me were ‘Marco, never forget what made you great.’ What he was saying was, stay behind your stove. When it came to that day when I no longer wanted to be in the kitchen and I had realised my dream, I respected those words.
Do you miss being behind the stove?
No. It’s a young man’s game. Did I want to be one of those boxers who had one fight too many? No. I saw Albert Roux lose his three stars. I saw Koffmann lose his three stars.
And let’s not forget, no Michelin inspector has more knowledge than the chefs they judge, and that’s what gave me the strength to give up my stars. If I am honest with myself, what have I really achieved? Zero. I am being judged by people with less knowledge, so what does it mean?
But when you were young, didn’t it mean everything to you?
That’s what I dreamt of. But one day you grow up and you look at something for what it is, not for what you want it to be. And if you look over the years now at how many people walked away from it: Joël Robuchon walked away from it, Alain Senderens walked away from it, Nico Ladenis walked away from it.
Then there are lots of chefs who have walked away from them because they are around the world somewhere making TV shows or whatever. They have walked away from the stove that made them great and they leave their reputations in the hands of others, which I could never do.
You are famous for giving people hell but you must have a nurturing side as well – how do you know when to call it?
In Hell’s Kitchen I wasn’t that person. I am very firm, I do a job and that’s it. And I had to deliver a standard to the best of my abilities with the celebrities I had been given. And what I did do at Hell’s Kitchen was 1.) I fed all my punters and 2.) I gave the public insight into how a professional kitchen is run, without belittling people and without swearing.
And at the end of the day, let’s not forget what a chef is – he is a pied piper. He has to make people follow him. As I said, the first thing you have to learn in a kitchen is how to say, ‘yes chef’. Albert Roux said many things and made me do many jobs. I may not have agreed with everything he said. I may not have wanted to do every job he made me do. But I always said ‘yes chef’. And because I said ‘yes chef’, I had the opportunity to realise my dream.
Is it true that until 1987, you went by Marco White, and it wasn’t until a critic included ‘Pierre’ in his review that you became known as Marco Pierre White?
No. You haven’t done your work correctly. Firstly, I was christened Marco Pierre White. My mother was Italian. She died when I was six. Did you know the Italians aligned themselves with the Germans from ‘39 to ‘45 – part of the Axis forces?
In the 60s, I was attacked for being Italian. I hated my name. You may not have suffered that. But when you have been belittled, when you have been persecuted, when you have been racially attacked, like I was, you don’t promote your name. It’s quite embarrassing.
Egon Ronay was the most powerful man in the restaurant industry. In those days he was still bigger than Michelin. He wrote for The Times. He was fascinated with my name: Marco White. I explained to him that my second name was Pierre – a name my mother gave me before she died. Then he wrote an article about the boy called Marco Pierre White. And from that day on, I became Marco Pierre White.
And had you been persecuted and branded like I was branded, you may have kept certain things secret. Thank you. Have a nice day.