The firebrand
Marco Pierre White’s talent had him bestriding the Nineties restaurant scene like a colossus, but his temper led to a number of very public bust-ups along the way. Since hanging up his apron, he’s carved out a new career as a successful restaurateur, but has he mellowed, asks Alistair Duncan
Above: Marco Pierre White at Marco, Stamford Bridge
Marco Pierre White’s volcanic temper is the stuff of legend. There’s a story, for instance, of him shredding the clothes of a junior chef who once complained of being too hot. Then there’s the tale of him ejecting one food critic from his restaurant for, heaven forbid, wearing bicycle clips. Or there’s the one of him reducing that least-delicate of flowers, Gordon Ramsay, who trained under White, to a sobbing wreck, overwhelmed by despair, quivering like a wobbly blancmange.
Today, the combustible chef-turned-restaurateur sits opposite me in the bowels of his subterranean Frankie’s restaurant just off Brompton Road (one in the chain that he co-runs with jockey Frankie Dettori), sporting loafers and an open-necked shirt. He slouches in his chair, leaning back so far that at one stage he kicks up his feet to use my armrest as a footstool, occasionally sweeping back his curly mop of shoulder-length hair.
He is completely at ease, but he is still an intense presence. He fixes me to my seat with his burrowing, brown stare and is unflappable under questioning. He assures me at the outset that I can ask him ‘any question I like’ but any question he doesn’t like (for instance, about his family life; he is currently divorcing from his third wife, Mati, the mother of his three youngest children), he dismisses with a firm sweep of his hand: ‘next question?’
There is never any doubt that Marco Pierre White, aged 46, is fully in control of the proceedings. After the interview ends, he tells me that he never gets nervous before interviews: he always knows that he’s done zillions more than the journalist who’s turned up to grill him.
I start off by asking the original bad boy of cooking, who rose from humble beginnings on a council estate in Leeds to become the youngest chef in the world to win three Michelin stars (he was 33), why he recently launched a broadside against the hugely influential Michelin guides. What is his beef with Michelin exactly?
‘I no longer understand their criteria,’ he explains. ‘Look, Michelin is Michelin. We have to respect them. Michelin have done a lot for gastronomy in this country. They’ve realised a lot of chefs’ dreams, including mine. But when I was a young boy, I understood what Michelin stood for. Today, I don’t understand what it stands for. There are a lot of Michelin-starred establishments in this country that aren’t full. Does that tell you what people actually want?’
Too many restaurants patronise customers, tell them what to eat, how to eat it and charge you heftily for the privilege, says White. He admits, however, that he hardly ever eats in other people’s restaurants in the UK, but instead samples rival chefs’ offerings during his many trips abroad. ‘I don’t care what other people do in Britain,’ he says blithely. ‘Why should I care? I care about what happens in my restaurants. And if I’m seen in someone else’s place, it’s right that people ask: “why isn’t he at his own restaurant?”’
Marco Pierre White retired from cooking in 1999. He was only 38 but he had had enough. He had reached the pinnacle of his powers but he was fed up with the punishing hours, so he quit life behind a stove and handed back his Michelin stars. He is now a restaurateur who lords over a sprawling empire of fine dining establishments; the cause for our conversation today is the opening of a new Frankie’s Sports Bar and Grill at Chelsea FC’s home ground, Stamford Bridge, to accompany his other restaurant, Marco, that opened there in September last year.
The menu at Marco’s sounds divine (unforgiving restaurant critic AA Gill recently rhapsodised the ‘clean and clear’ crab salad he enjoyed there, as well as the ‘rich, smooth’ foie gras terrine and ‘tireless’ scallops), but I suggest that eating at Marco’s is beyond the means of your average football supporter (a match day three-course set menu sets you back £45 per head, although shepherd’s pie à la carte, for instance, costs just £12.50). Is that why he’s launching a Frankie’s there (which is admittedly more affordable)? Because most Chelsea fans are priced out of Marco’s?
‘No, I’m a great believer in value,’ he says. ‘You can eat at Marco’s all in for £40, £50. If you want to make it more expensive, then you do that with the wine. I think, in this day and age, food should be at a sensible price.’
£50 for a meal still sounds a lot for a typical Chelsea fan, in my opinion, but, anyway, White seems content that some of Chelsea players, who wouldn’t bat an eyelid if the bill came to 10 times that figure, support the restaurant: Frank Lampard and John Terry eat there on a regular basis, while Andriy Shevchenko was there the other night. I ask what Roman Abramovich typically orders when he’s there for the evening but the drawbridge instantly goes up: ‘I couldn’t pass comment on him,’ he says, flicking me a blank stare that leaves me in no way unsure that questions about the Russian billionaire and Chelsea FC paymaster are completely off-limits.
White has largely shunned the path of TV stardom, although he did agree to do reality TV show Hell’s Kitchen last year, taking over from Gordon Ramsay, with whom he has enjoyed a bitter feud for many years now.
‘I stepped into the ring of Hell’s Kitchen because I didn’t like the way that certain people portrayed my industry,’ he explains, in a remark clearly aimed at his former employee. ‘I don’t believe that they gave a true insight into how a kitchen is run. I wanted to put the reality back into a reality TV show.’
He is due to step back into the ring later this year when his new show, Marco’s Great British Feast, is aired on ITV. The programme sees White travel the length and breadth of the country seeking out the finest ingredients that the land has to offer, but it also allows him to indulge in three of his favourite pastimes: shooting, fishing and hunting.
White only shoots game birds twice or three times a year these days (he used to do up to 90 days a season) and he especially loves fishing with his children, he says. He regularly stalks deer in Hampshire, Dorset and Berkshire and takes great pleasure in the knowledge that it allows him to know the precise provenance of his meat.
‘If I go deer stalking, I don’t just shoot any deer that I see. I select it. It’s culled. Then, it’s hung, it’s prepared, it’s butchered, it’s cooked and it’s served and all along, I know what’s happening. Rather than buying a game deer that is sweating and overhung and maybe has been frozen.’
Time is pushing on for White who is in the midst of organising a charity event for Formula 1 boss Eddie Jordan tonight, but not before one minor rant about Heston Blumenthal, the gist of which is that molecular gastronomy is just a gimmick, ‘giving the journalists something to write about’. Diatribe over, I can’t go without quizzing White about that fearsome reputation of his. Is he still as tempestuous as ever? Or has he mellowed with age?
‘When you do a job, like a chef’s job, you have to be firm but you have to be fair,’ he says. ‘As I’ve often said, most of my reputation is a product of exaggeration and ignorance.’ Hmm. What would his staff say?
‘Lots of my staff have been with me for many, many years,’ he says, the slightest glimmer of a smile lighting up his adamantine facial features. ‘Let me put it this way: it’s been a long journey.’
Marco, Stamford Bridge, Fulham Road, SW6 1HS, www.marcorestaurant.co.uk; Frankie’s Sports Bar and Grill opens at Stamford Bridge later this month, www.frankiesitalianbarandgrill.com