Marco Pierre White | |
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| Born | December 11, 1961 |
| Culinary career | |
| Cooking style | French cuisine |
Current restaurant(s)
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Television show(s)
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Marco Pierre White (born 11 December 1961) is an English chef and restaurateur. He is renowned by patrons and peers alike for having provided a highly creative and innovative impetus into contemporary international cuisine,[1] and is known as much for his quick temper as for his exceptional skills as a chef.
White has been dubbed the first celebrity chef[1], enfant terrible[2] of the UK restaurant scene, or the Godfather[1] of modern cooking. Having been awarded three Michelin stars, he has put English cooking on a par with classic haute cuisine.[1]
Marco Pierre White was the third of four boys born to Italian Maria-Rosa Gallina, who had come to Britain to learn English, and Frank White, who had struck up a conversation with Maria at the Griffin Hotel in Leeds while he was playing cards.
After marrying in 1958, they lived in a council house in Leeds and had sons Graham, Clive and Marco. Six years later, Maria gave birth to a fourth son, Craig Simon. Thirteen days afterwards, she collapsed and was taken back to St. James's Hospital, where she died of a brain haemorrhage.[3]
White began his training in the kitchen at the Hotel St George in Harrogate, North Yorkshire and later at the Box Tree in Ilkley, West Yorkshire. Arriving in London as a 16-year-old with "£7.36, a box of books and a bag of clothes",[1] he began his classical training as a commis under Albert Roux and Michel Roux at Le Gavroche, a period that would lead Albert to describe him as 'my little lamb'. He continued his training under Pierre Koffman at La Tante Claire (now the site of Gordon Ramsay), moving to work in the kitchen of Raymond Blanc at Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons and Nico Ladenis of Chez Nico at Ninety Park Lane. He then moved out on his own, working in the kitchen at the Six Bells public house in the King’s Road, Chelsea.[4]
By the age of 33, Marco Pierre White had been awarded three Michelin stars, becoming the youngest Briton bestowed with this accolade.[1] On completion of his training in 1987, he opened the Harveys in Wandsworth Common, London (now the site of Chez Bruce), where he won his first Michelin star almost immediately and was awarded his second in 1988, before moving on to become chef-patron of the Oak Room at Le Meridien Piccadilly and the dining-room at the former Hyde Park Hotel.
Although White worked relentlessly for 17 years to pursue his ambition, he ultimately found that this professional acknowledgment did not bring him happiness. In 1999, he gave up his Michelin stars:
"I was being judged by people who had less knowledge than me, so what was it truly worth? I gave Michelin inspectors too much respect, and I belittled myself. I had three options: I could be a prisoner of my world and continue to work six days a week, I could live a lie and charge high prices and not be behind the stove or I could give my stars back, spend time with my children and re-invent myself."[5]
During his early career in the kitchen, White regularly ejected patrons from his restaurants if he took offence at their comments.[6] Similarly, when in the 1980s a city trader asked if he could have a side order of chips with his lunch, White hand-cut and personally cooked the chips but charged the customer £25 for the honour.[6] A young chef at Harveys, who once complained of heat in the kitchen, had the back of his chef's jacket and pants cut open by White wielding a sharp paring knife.[7]
Although White was the youngest chef in the world and the first Briton to be awarded three Michelin stars, he announced his retirement from the kitchen in 1999,[1] cooking his final meal for a paying customer in December at the Oak Room, to develop his portfolio of restaurants through his eponymous White Star Line company. His London portfolio currently comprises Belvedere, Criterion, Drones, L'Escargot, Luciano's, Mirabelle, Quo Vadis and the Frankie's chain of Italian pizzerias in partnership with jockey Frankie Dettori.
White is also dining consultant to cruise line P&O Cruises. His dining Mediterranean restaurant, The White Room, is scheduled to be launched on the Ventura in April 2008. The Ventura should also have a Frankie's Bar and Grill on the top deck and White should oversee The Beach House, a restaurant designed specifically to appeal to families.
White has published several books, including White Heat (containing a photograph of a young Gordon Ramsay enjoying a rare moment of levity in the Harveys kitchen), an autobiography, White Slave (retitled The Devil in the Kitchen for its paperback edition),[8] and Wild Food from Land and Sea. He has acted as a mentor to a number of prominent chefs of the current generation including his fellow three-star recipients Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal.
As well as influencing the cuisines of celebrated chefs who have apprenticed and worked under him in Australia, the likes of Donovan Cooke and Philippa Sibley formerly of est est est and Ondine, Shannon Bennett of Vue du Monde, Warren Turnbull of Assiette, and Curtis Stone of Quo Vadis, among others.[citation needed]
White's recent autobiography includes a picture of Gordon Ramsay in tears, caused by Ramsay making a mistake and White shouting at him. In 2007, Ramsay admitted stealing the reservations book from his own Chelsea restaurant in 1998 and blaming the theft on White to prevent White being appointed as chef in his place.[9]
White appeared in trailers for the 2004 film Layer Cake.
As of 3 September 2007, White is the Head Chef in ITV's Hell's Kitchen series. Asked in April 2007 whether he'd be following in the manner of the previous incumbent, Gordon Ramsay, White said, "Gordon did it his way I'll do it my way. We all have different ways of expressing ourselves. I want my emphasis to be on the food and the kitchens rather than the swearing."[5]
Marco also commented, "I might be the hardest person they'll have ever met but I've got a heart just as big. It's about picking people up off the floor and inspiring them to want to carry on 'til the end."[10]
However, his publicity for Hell's Kitchen did not go as smoothly as planned during an interview for Radio Times' "One Final Question" feature. White took offence to one of the questions put by journalist Jenny Eden and abruptly ended the conversation. The next day, Eden received a copy of White's autobiography, The Devil in the Kitchen, with a note of apology inscribed inside the cover.[11]
The accompanying book to the show, Marco Pierre White in Hell's Kitchen, was published 23 August 2007 by Ebury Press.[12]
White has been married three times. His first wife was Alex McArthur, who was a petite blonde daughter of a surgeon from Buckinghamshire, and who worked at his local fishmonger. After a year-long romance, they were married at Chelsea Register Office on 8 June 1988; neither family attended the ceremony. Alex broke her leg a few weeks before their daughter, Letitia, was born in July 1989. The marriage ended in January 1990.[citation needed]
White then dated PR girl Nicky Barthorpe, who took him off to France to recuperate after he collapsed in August 1990 with exhaustion and high blood pressure. He moved into her flat in Chelsea on their return, but after nearly three years and upset at his lack of commitment, Nicky sent his belongings to Harveys in black bin bags to demonstrate her disgust at his affair with Mariella Frostrup.[citation needed]
White then met 21-year-old model Lisa Butcher outside Tramp nightclub in Jermyn Street, London. They were engaged within three weeks—White says today that he was so intoxicated by her looks that he forgot to think about her personality.[13] Engaged for two months, Butcher sold the wedding in a £20,000 deal to Hello! magazine. The wedding took place at the Brompton Oratory on 15 August 1992, where Albert Roux was best man, and Lisa had forgotten to invite his father and brothers. White says he knew the marriage was a mistake when the saw her £3,000 floor-length, backless Bruce Oldfield dress with cutaway sides. Furious at the excess display of her body, White immediately told Butcher why, saying that Butcher looked as if she was dressed to go down the catwalk rather than the aisle.[14] Butcher says of their 15-week marriage: "We went to the Scilly Isles for our honeymoon. On the first day Marco turned to me and said, 'I don’t love you.' We spent two miserable days when we didn’t speak and he went shark fishing. Then I left." In her one interview about the marriage, Butcher has hinted that something unspeakable happened on the honeymoon: "Something very bad did happen but I’m not going to say what it was. It really wasn't a very pleasant experience for me and my family."[citation needed]
White described his bride as "a completely thick snob", while Butcher had three dates with Princess Diana's former boyfriend James Gilbey.[citation needed] But a brief reconciliation was scuppered with White's affair with Mati Conejero, the bartender at The Canteen.[15] They have two sons: Luciano (born October 1994); Marco Jnr; and a daughter, Mirabelle, born after White retired and the couple had married in June 2000.
In his leisure time, White can be found freshwater fishing and game hunting.
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