The Devil in the Kitchen Read online

  THE DEVIL

  in the

  KITCHEN

  SEX, PAIN, MADNESS, AND THE

  MAKING OF A GREAT CHEF

  MARCO PIERRE WHITE

  with JAMES STEEN

  BLOOMSBURY

  Contents

  Introduction: Another Day, Another Dinner

  1. Off My Trolley

  2. Blue Skies over Leeds

  3. Gambling, Greyhounds and Grief

  4. I Delivered (the Milk)

  5. The George

  6. Black and White into Color

  7. It Was Meant to Be

  8. The Boss of Bosses

  9. Dining with the Bear

  10. Raymond Blanc: The Oxford Don

  11. White-Balled

  12. Coming Home

  13. The Christening

  14. Beautiful Doll

  15. No Bill, No Mink

  16. Banged Up and Butchered

  17. Not a Lot of People Know This

  18. The Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me

  19. The Dream Becomes Reality

  20. Just Another Day

  21. Everything I’d Worked For

  22. Blue Skies over Leeds, Again

  23. Rough Seas

  24. Letting Go of Status

  25. Life Without the Props

  Acknowledgments

  Recipes

  INTRODUCTION

  Another Day, Another Dinner

  CAN’T STAND FLYING. Hate it.

  The fear stems from my inability to understand how planes stay in the sky and the knowledge that some of them don’t. I have agreed to attend business meetings abroad, and then cried off because I couldn’t bring myself to board the plane. I surprised even myself when I agreed to come to the U.S. for a book tour in May 2007. This wouldn’t be a simple return trip from my comfort zone in London to New York. The eighteen-page itinerary had me flying all over the place, from San Francisco to Miami and lots of places in between. During the first three days of the seventeen-day trip I’d managed nine hours of sleep and had turned into an exhausted, jet-lagged beast, stumbling from book signing to radio show to airport, being overfed and plied with too much alcohol along the way.

  I don’t want to sound like a moaning British git—there are far worse things than being given too much food and drink and staying in nice hotels. What I should point out—and this is important—is that I fell in love with America. It’s an extraordinary place. When it comes to food and gastronomy, it reminds me of my early days in the industry (Britain back in the 1970s and early ’80s), when people still got excited about Michelin, and chefs wanted to be great cooks and win awards, rather than become famous. The restaurant scene in the United States is just more exciting than in the UK, where Michelin-starred restaurants are patronizing to customers and the staff dictates how you should eat your food, all the while reminding you that you’re lucky to have even gotten a table. I didn’t get any of that in the States. The dining experience in America is much more democratic.

  In Chicago, I enjoyed both the technical brilliance of a ten-course meal by Grant Achatz at Alinea and the most delicious hot dog of my life at Hot Doug’s, where I waited in a queue for twenty minutes just to get inside.

  In New York, I was reunited with my old friend Mario Batali, the celebrated chef with whom I worked at the Six Bells, in Chelsea, London, in the mid-eighties. Up until then, the last time he’d seen me was just as I was chucking a pan of hot risotto in his direction. He’s since forgiven me.

  Mario met me at my hotel and said he would take me on a quick sightseeing tour on the way to lunch at one of his restaurants. We stepped out of the hotel, and he handed me a motorbike helmet—no visor, no strap—and said, “Put that on. Let’s go.” He then pointed at a parked Vespa to which I said, “Mario, it’s great to see you after all these years, but there’s no way the two of us are going to fit on that thing.” He’s a big man, and I’m not small, either. “Marco, put the helmet on,” he said. Somehow we managed to squeeze onto the saddle and we zoomed off.

  I found myself on the back of that Vespa for a good portion of my stay in New York, stopping to enjoying tripe and spaghetti with bottarga at Mario’s legendary restaurant Babbo; marveling at the live frogs, eels and fish in Chinatown; taking in the view of the city’s skyline from the Brooklyn side (note to the reader: the view is better enjoyed when one isn’t jet-lagged, stuffed to the gills with food and wine and suffering from the onset of hypothermia); and, of course, teaching the good people of New York City about a drink I call “the house cocktail.” The house cocktail consists of a large shot of sambuca, which you set on fire before slamming your hand down onto the glass. The aim is to get the glass to stick to your palm, and then suck the air and sambuca out of it in one quick shot. Halfway through one of my tutorials, someone knocked the flaming drink onto me, shattering the glass and causing shards to bury themselves in my hand. All in a day’s work.

  It’s been quite a year. In addition to “discovering” America, one of the biggest changes in my life has been my decision to step back into the kitchen for the first time since 1999. A few weeks after the publication of the hardcover edition of this book, I received two offers of work, which, if accepted, would mean that I would have to put on the apron again and return to the kitchen.

  I accepted both invitations.

  The first job seemed uncomplicated enough and, given my experience, undemanding. I was asked if I would go to France to do a cooking demonstration for fifteen ladies in the kitchens of Sir Rocco Forte’s hotel, Chateau de Bagnols, which is just outside Lyon. The women were all guests at the hotel. Their husbands would be spending the day wine-tasting at the Montrachet vineyard, while I would be at the stove doing my demonstration. When I arrived at the hotel, a smartly dressed man dashed up to me, held out his hand for a shake and said, “Hello, Darko.”

  I was a bit irritated that he couldn’t get my name right and said, “No, it’s Marco.”

  Again he said, “Hello, Darko.”

  Again I said, “No, it’s Marco. It’s Marco with an ‘M.’ ”

  “No,” he said, “I’m Darko, Marco. I’m the host.” I felt a bit of an idiot (and after that I was very polite to Darko), but not half as stupid as I did the following day, when it was time to do the demo.

  The plan was to cook three dishes in one hour, or rather, rustle up three dishes that each took a mere twenty minutes to make. These dishes had to be quite effortless and easy to cook at home. I decided to serve grilled lobster with parsley and chervil and a bearnaise mousse-line; turbot with citrus fruits, a little coriander and some fennel; then sea bass à la niçoise. It was while cooking the last one—the sea bass dish—that I came unstuck . . . or rather stuck to a plate.

  Sea bass à la niçoise is a simple dish in which the tomatoes are put under the grill so that the water content evaporates under the heat. You’re getting rid of the acidity, basically, and bringing out the sweetness. Once grilled, the tomatoes are thrown into a pan that contains olive oil, lemon juice, coriander and basil. During the grilling process, I somehow got dragged into a bit of chitchat with the ladies, which was disastrous because the distraction caused me to lose my timing. There I was, bantering, laughing and cracking jokes, when suddenly I remembered the plate of tomatoes under the grill. As I grabbed the plate, I felt the most excruciating pain in my hand and realized that the searing heat of the dish had welded my thumb to the porcelain. My entire body must have flinched. Yet the gaggle of smiling ladies—my happy pupils—didn’t seem to notice that their cookery teacher was being cooked.

  I told myself I had two options: first, I could either be professional and pretend nothing was happening, even though I could not remember the l
ast time I had had so much pain inflicted upon me; second, I could succumb to the agony, cave in, drop the plate and scream so loud and for so long that I would shake the foundations of Rocco’s chateau.

  I went for the first option. In my head there was this mantra: take the pain, take the pain, just take the bleeding pain. I must tell you, that plate came out of the grill faster than any plate has ever come out of a grill. Normally, I would have got a spoon and scraped the tomatoes from the plate and into the pan, but because of the agony I was enduring there wasn’t time for the spoon. I found myself tossing the sliced tomatoes from the hot plate into air, and it just so happened that they landed neatly in the pan, on top of the herbs, the olive oil and lemon juice. It looked like a circus trick. Afterwards the kitchen chef came up to me and said, “Wow, you are so quick.” I should have said to him, “It helps if you’re handling a plate that feels like molten lava.” But I didn’t.

  While learning how to live with a grilled thumb back in London, I got my second offer to return to the kitchen. It was a call from the Hell’s Kitchen people, asking me if I’d like to do their TV show in Britain. In this memoir, you’ll find me giving an opinion about chefs who would rather be in front of the camera than behind the stove. As far as I’m concerned, if someone is paying a huge amount of money to come to your restaurant and eat your food, then you have a duty to be in the kitchen. When I was a lad working at Le Gavroche, if Albert Roux wasn’t there for the service, you noticed the difference. Having said that, was it hypocritical of me to do Hell’s Kitchen? No, I don’t think so because I haven’t been a chef at my restaurants since retiring. I do not claim to be in the kitchen, and when customers come to my restaurants they do not expect me to see me behind the stove. All clear on that? Great.

  Now, this wasn’t the first time I’d been approached to do television. Over the years I’d said no to a number of TV production companies, knowing that invariably the projects hadn’t been right or the timing was wrong. This time things just clicked, and the idea of stepping back into the ring began to appeal to me. I realized that I missed the adrenaline of the kitchen and the joy of serving great food. Sometimes in life we have something to prove to ourselves. I wanted to prove to myself that I’m not over-the-hill and that I still have a lot to give to my industry. So I accepted the deal and spent two very crazy weeks teaching ten celebrities how to cook (the format of the show is slightly different in the UK).

  I think it was good for my kids to see me working in that environment—something to remember their dad by; an insight, in a crazy way, into my world—and I loved being reunited with some of the guys from the old days at Harveys and Canteen. It was only a TV program, but I treated it as a restaurant opening and looked to inspire those involved, rather than impress those who weren’t. The truth is, I would never have agreed to do Hell’s Kitchen if it weren’t for The Devil in the Kitchen. The process of writing this book helped me to leave behind the baggage that was weighing me down and allowed me to move forward with my life. I like to think that I’ve developed, for the best.

  And can I board a plane without trembling? You bet.

  ONE

  Off My Trolley

  THE CHEESE TROLLEY was just on its way out when I spotted It.

  This was in the mid-nineties, one evening shortly before dinner service. I was standing at the passe—the counter where the plates are collected by the waiters—in my kitchen at the Restaurant Marco Pierre White at the Hyde Park Hotel in London. The trolley was on its way out to the dining room and six or eight cheeses were on it. There was nothing wrong with any of them—they were all beautifully ripe, plump and oozing—but I had a rule in the kitchen, and as the trolley was being wheeled past me, I noticed the rule had been broken.

  The rule was simple: the cheese had to be the right size. In the afternoon, after lunch service, we would take a look at the cheese on the trolley and a decision was taken as to whether it needed replacing. If a particular cheese was substantial, the size of a dinner plate perhaps, and half of it had been eaten during lunch, then the remaining half would still be large enough to merit staying on the trolley, and before we opened for dinner, it would be trimmed up, ready for serving.

  However, if a cheese was small to begin with, the size of a saucer, say, and half of it had been served at lunch, then the rule dictated that it would be taken off the trolley. So we would always have backup cheese, which we would take out of the fridge to ripen up between lunch and dinner. As cheese is traditionally the responsibility of front of house, it was the maître d’hôtel’s task to replace the ones that had been hit hard over lunch.

  The point was that I wanted to present a generous cheese trolley. If the presentation is not correct, then it looks mean and should not go out into the restaurant. It must be grand and generous rather than a mess of lots of little cheeses, and it had to be particularly grand and generous in my restaurant because I was Britain’s highest-paid chef and running what was considered to be one of the nation’s finest restaurants in what was certainly one of the world’s most luxurious hotels.

  But on this particular night when I was at the passe, I saw the trolley going out carrying a cheese that was too small. My easy-to-obey rule had been broken by the maître d’, Nicolas. There was a cheese on that trolley that was two-thirds eaten. That is when I flipped.

  I stopped Nicolas in his tracks and pointed at the trolley. “Where are you going with that?” I asked.

  He knew something nasty was coming. I could see it in his eyes. “I’m taking it through, Marco.”

  “No, Nicolas. No, no, no, no, no, no. Fuck, no.”

  “Sorry, Marco.”

  “Not right, Nicolas. Not correct, not right. The fucking cheese is not fucking right.”

  “Sorry, Marco.”

  I picked up the first cheese. “Not right!” With all my might I threw it against the wall. It stuck to the tiles. I picked up the second cheese. “Not right!” I chucked it at the wall. Like the first, it was so wonderfully ripe that it splattered onto the tiles and remained glued to them. Then I hurled the remaining cheeses, one after another, at that wall. Splat after splat after splat—six or maybe eight times. The trolley was now empty, except for a cheese knife.

  Most of the chefs looked down, carrying on with their work as if nothing had happened. Nicolas and a couple of cooks raced over to the wall, ready to pry off the cheeses and clear up the smelly mess. I shouted, “Leave them there. Leave them there. Leave them fucking there all night. No one is allowed to touch them.” The cheeses had to stay on that wall all night so that whenever Nicolas came into the kitchen, he would see them glued to the white tiles (except for the Camembert, which snailed down to the floor). And he would never, ever make the mistake again.

  It was extreme behavior, I accept that, but I was driving home a point, and if it’s OK with you, I would like to put the incident into context. My restaurant at the Hyde Park Hotel was probably the most expensive restaurant in Britain. If you had the Foie Gras Surprise followed by the Lobster aux Truffes and then a pudding, you were looking at £85 for a three-course dinner. If you wanted the Sea Bass Caviar, you would have to pay a £50 supplement. How serious is that?

  I had spent twenty years of my life building my reputation, and people—the customers, in other words—were paying for my knowledge. By then I had won three Michelin stars, and was the only British chef to have them, and my great belief was consistency. A three-star restaurant has to get things right, otherwise there’s no point in doing them at all. How often have you been out for dinner and had a great starter and a great pudding but a weak main course?

  I could not allow you to endure any weakness at the Hyde Park Hotel. Whatever it was, from the bread to the amuse-gueules, the starters to the fish course, the main course to the puddings, the coffee to the petits fours, the chocolates to the cheese, it all had to be consistently of the highest standard.

  Everything had to be right. Even the taste and temperature of the soup had to be checked.
It had to be hot, which might sound like an obvious point, but how many of us have ordered a soup that comes out tepid? I’m not happy with that and I don’t think you would be. If you’re not consistent, you’ll never go from one to two stars or two to three.

  The cheese on the wall sent out a message to everyone working that night, from the youngest boy in the kitchen carrying food and serving bread to the maître d’ bringing in an order. Every single member of the kitchen staff had to look at the cheese, glued to the wall by its ripeness, whenever they came to the passe. An eighteen-year-old commis—an assistant chef—walks into the kitchen to collect a tray, he walks past it, he sees it and it’s imprinted in his memory forever. You have to deliver the message that they must never take a shortcut. You can’t just say, “Come on, boys, let’s try to get it right.” That just won’t work. If you are not extreme, then people will take shortcuts because they don’t fear you. And to achieve and retain the very highest standards, day after day, meal after meal, in an environment as difficult and fast and chaotic as a restaurant kitchen, is extreme, well, in the extreme.

  Looking back, I don’t think I could have done it any other way. My pursuit for excellence went way beyond a passion for food. I was a man obsessed. I had to be the best and in order to do that I would have to win three Michelin stars. To explain: the Michelin Guide is the little red book that was first published by André Michelin in 1900 in France and today is updated every January. To every great chef in Europe— and since 2006, New York City—it is known as “the bible”; its rating can make or break careers, restaurants, even entire towns. Three stars, the guide’s highest rating, means that your place serves “exceptional cuisine” and is “worth a special journey,” but that’s an amazing understatement. A restaurant with three Michelin stars is a monument to the highest—the most extreme—expression of the art of cooking. At the time of writing, only fifty-four restaurants in the whole of Europe have three stars. When I won mine, I became the first British chef—and the world’s youngest—ever to achieve such an accolade.