The man with the dough | Life and style | The Guardian The Observer The man with the dough As a hip young gastronomic gunslinger, he was the first British chef to win three Michelin stars. These days Marco Pierre White is more likely to be found in the boardroom than the kitchen. But what is he doing launching a chain of pizzerias, asks Jay Rayner. And is he paying for it with his own money? Sunday 10 July 2005 11.34 EDT First published on Sunday 10 July 2005 11.34 EDT Share on Messenger Close A few hours before I was due to meet Marco Pierre White for lunch I was warned by a friend who once worked with him that he would try to seduce me. 'He does it to everyone,' she said, with a resigned air. Not that I needed to be told. Marco is famous for hosing down his interviewers with serious liquor.

The last time OFM dispatched a journalist it was two bottles of Chateau d'Yquem, the most expensive white wine on the face of the planet; by the time he had finished filling the glasses our writer was practically petitioning Rome to fast-track an application for beatification. I, however, am made of sterner stuff . It certainly takes more than a bottle of 1970 d'Yquem to get me on my knees. (A case, perhaps? Maybe two?) In any case we are hardly starting from a neutral position, Marco and I. It's true that despite my six years as a restaurant critic and his two decades as chef and restaurateur, we had never met, not properly. The first time I set eyes on him was only a few months ago, when I was reviewing his new upmarket pizzeria, Frankie's in Knightsbridge, which he believes will be the source of a coming fortune. I thanked him briefly for a good meal on the way out (because it had been), but only as an anonymous punter. In print, though, I have never been afraid of letting the great MPW have it with both barrels.

In the late Eighties when he made a splash at Harvey's in South London, winning his first two Michelin stars within a year of each other, being crowned the new wunderkind of British gastronomy and throwing what he considered the appropriate hissy fits, I was yet to pull my chair up to the table. A few years later he moved to the Hyde Park Hotel, where he became the first British-born chef and the youngest anywhere in the world to win three Michelin stars. Now I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. It was - and remains in real terms - the most expensive meal I have ever bought with my own money, at £267 for two. It was also the most joyless. I remember almost nothing of what I ate, save a pig's trotter dish that he had cooked in homage to the chef, Pierre Koffman. The rest was a dismal procession of prissiness plated more for design than taste. What I do recall is the funereal atmosphere of the up-itself dining room, the gloomy demeanour of the staff and the sommelier who suggested a £75 bottle of wine when we had asked for something at £50.

Later I had an equally dreary meal at the Criterion on Piccadilly Circus, one of the first restaurants Marco took over as proprietor rather than chef. The food was bad - clumsy chicken Kiev - the service worse. Then there were the raging arguments I used to have with his PR guru, the late Alan Crompton-Batt, a friend of Marco's and the man credited with igniting the media frenzy that developed around him. Crompton-Batt accused me of ignoring Marco's chefs in an article on rising stars of the kitchen, while favouring those of Gordon Ramsay. There could be no greater sin in Marco's eyes because the two have long been at silent war, even though Ramsay was once his protege. And it's true that I had, but only because no one knows who Marco's chefs are. He collects restaurants: the Mirabelle, Quo Vadis, the Belvedere, L'Escargot, Wheelers, Drones. Ramsay collects personnel - Angela Hartnett, Marcus Wareing, Mark Sargeant, Jason Atherton - and opens restaurants around them.

I had even managed to get into a row with one of Marco's oldest friends from school days, a chef called Simon Gueller now at the Box Tree in Ilkley, who had initiated legal action against me over one of my reviews. Marco is famed for his loyalty to his oldest friends. What will this huge bear of a man with those vast meat-plate hands do to me, when we meet for real at Frankie's? He will, as it turns out, offer me a drink. He likes a drink does Marco, like a fish enjoys water. I decline. I know where that one can lead. 'You knew my old mate Alan didn't you?' he says. Yes, I say, cheerfully, and I didn't drink with him at lunchtime either. Marco laughs a big hearty laugh and orders himself a glass of white wine. He didn't start drinking until he stopped being a chef when he was 38, but he seems to have picked up the basics. 'He was a good boy, was Alan,' he says, lighting another in a long line of cigarettes. Good, so we won't be scrapping over that then. Marco gives me a big friendly grin so that his eyebrows rise towards his newly buzzcut hair.

He was famous for his tangle of flowing locks but, as of a couple of days before, that has all gone. I am looking at the new model Marco. And that, it seems, will be the theme of our day: goodbye cheffy, food-obsessed Marco. Meet the new business model MPW, well into his forties, but streamlined and ready for action. He launches into a long anecdote about the Box Tree where he had one of his first kitchen jobs in the late Seventies. With us are a very blonde PR girl called Rebecca and a very dark chap called Jeremy from the company Global Brands, who are both here to make sure we talk about a new range of saucepans that Marco is helping launch with the kitchen utensils company Beka. They hang on his every word, and laugh at his jokes and generally do the things you should do around a big man like Marco who wants an audience, which is to say, be one. I mention the Simon Gueller business, briefly, and Marco bats it away. We won't be arguing over that either, then.

'It's clear he likes you,' Rebecca says quietly at one point, like he's some huge St Bernard, whose moods can be discerned only by the eager pant of his tongue. When I arrive at Frankie's it is empty. The huge disco balls on the ceiling turn silently to themselves, scattering the walls with fragile jewels of light. The leather tablecloths are undisturbed. For years now Marco has been attempting to find a restaurant concept that he could roll out from this site, just down the road from Harrods. First it was the Chophouse Parisienne, a classic French bistro, but that failed. Then it was a place called Chez Max, also a French bistro, but that didn't do either. The Frankie's concept, which is a joint venture with the jockey Frankie Dettori, is working because the proposition - good quality Italian food, great service, nice price point - is so simple. And their crispy shards of battered courgette are to die for. They are about to open another one in west London and shortly after that the Criterion will be converted into a Frankie's too. I ask him how much of the business he owns. 'I own nothing of it,' he says coolly.

I'm sorry? 'If you own things in life you have a responsibility to them. I don't want responsibility. I'm not a director. I'm not a shareholder. I have no income from it.' This is, frankly, bizarre. Since he hung up his apron in December 1999 , announcing that gaining three stars had been fun but that 'maintaining them was boring', he has been linked with a dizzying number of business ventures, from Planet Hollywood, through a sandwich company, to those myriad restaurants. Now he is telling me he doesn't own anything. Which is curious, because I'd spent the morning on the Companies House website, where he is listed as a director of half a dozen companies. Of course you can be a director without owning a share, but still it seems odd. We would have to investigate this later. For now we were off to lunch at Drones, a Belgravia dining club named after the fictional club in PG Wodehouse's Jeeves books, which Marco opened with the nightclub promoter Piers Adam, two years ago. His driver, Mr Ishi, will transport us all in Marco's Range Rover which is waiting outside, its expensive seats protected by thick covers.

'Sorry about those,' Marco says. 'I use this car when I go deer stalking. Do you hunt? Would you like to hunt? We could go hunting.' I say I haven't and that I couldn't imagine myself doing so any time soon. I'm a nice Jewish boy from North West London. Undergrowth is not my natural habitat. 'Any country pursuits at all then? Fishing? Anything like that?' I say no and he looks disappointed. Marco is famous for styling himself as a country squire. He even owns a pub down in Hampshire, the Yew Tree near Highclere Castle. 'Are you a pub man?' I say yes, because I can't bear him to think I'm a complete lady boy, though I'm not a pub man. 'Lager or beer?' I know what I'm meant to say so I tell him I love bitter, though of course I don't. Still, he has at least revealed that he owns a pub, which he describes as his 'pension'. What about Drones? How much of that does he own? 'I don't anything of it. I sold my share to Ben Goldsmith because it didn't fi t in to my future plans.

I told you I don't want the responsibility of owning things.' Jeremy, the brand man, who is desperate to make sure we talk about the Beka saucepans, now pipes up. 'You do own the White Heat collection.' Marco sniffs. 'No I don't. I own the brand. Owning things takes up too much time.' It's going to be a long afternoon. At Drones, a pleasing wood-panelled space with nice mobiles hanging from the ceiling and some terrible paintings on the walls, we trail across the dining room, all part of Marco's entourage now. I notice he has his initials embroidered on the breast of his white shirt. Waiters in this club that he doesn't own swarm about him, like so many paparazzi attending to a minor royal. Over the menus - good club food like potted shrimps and fishcakes and sausages - we talk restaurants. 'What I love about my career was that I saw the old world, like the Box Tree and Michel Bourdin at the Connaught. Then came the golden age of gastronomy, Albert Roux, Nico Ladenis, Pierre Koffman.

The people who replaced that, they all pretend to cook when they don't cook.' It would seem that he's referring to Gordon Ramsay here though, whenever he does refer to people by name, he insists it's off the record. Marco is renowned for falling out with people - the actor Michael Caine, the artist Damien Hirst, his mentor Albert Roux, Ramsay - but it doesn't sound like he wants to pick a fight today. 'The reason I gave up cooking was because it became a job, not a way of life. I could have stayed a prisoner of that world. I could have lived a lie and not been in the kitchen. Or I could give up cooking and reinvent myself. The problem was I became unemployed. I don't have a job any more.' I thought you were a businessman? 'If anything, I'm just becoming a businessman. I'm beginning to understand it now.' Later in the conversation, however, he denies he's a businessman at all. So what about all those companies he's a director of? Companies with names like Sellican, MPW Criterion and Baker's Dozen? He responds with a completely unintelligible explanation of what those companies do, designed to reveal nothing.

I try another tack. Looking at the accounts of companies with which Marco has been involved what becomes most obvious are the losses they have made. MPW Criterion for example, had losses in 2001 of over £4 million, double that of the year before. Its liabilities, when people to whom it owed money were thrown in, amounted to £9.7m. By 2003, the last year for which fi gures are publicly available, the liabilities had dropped but still topped £3m. 'Those losses can be used against profits,' Marco says. And then, 'If you had £10m in creditors and debts you wouldn't be in business, would you? But we are.' What does he make of all the press reports about his business dealings, the ones that say his restaurants are in trouble, the others that say he's worth £50m? 'Doesn't bother me. Why should it bother me?' His enthusiasm for this conversation has noticeably cooled. Before he was expansive, gregarious. Now he looks at me suspiciously as if I'm trying to catch him out. Rebecca the PR girl shifts uncomfortably in the seat next to me.

I ask him who owns the Mirabelle. 'I don't know,' he says expressionless. What restaurants do you have interest in? 'No idea.' I ask him about Baker's Dozen, a company he acquired only a few weeks ago. What is it? 'It's a company.' What does it do? 'It has interests.' What sort of interests? 'Interests can take many forms.' And in this case? 'Food.' This is getting tedious. I am, after all, a journalist. I point out that I'm here to find out stuff, not talk in riddles. He grabs my notebook and sketches out a standard MPW business deal in diagrams. It is, he says, all off the record and at the end rips the page out the notebook and stuff s it in his pocket, like a naughty schoolboy with a fi lthy doodle. It doesn't make any difference because it's completely opaque. The fact is that trying to get to the bottom of Marco's business empire is like trying to follow one of his recipes: a job only for the professional.

As long ago as 2001 it was announced that he was stepping down from the company that owned the Mirabelle, Quo Vadis and all the others, but that he would remain as a shareholder and consultant. His long time business partner, the restaurateur Jimmy Lahoud, is certainly still involved and the accounts of the various companies that Lahoud and Marco have been a part of regularly refer to personal loans made by the men to those companies, and consultancy fees going back the other way, but those only give a snapshot of what has been. It is certainly the case that a very complex network of companies is involved, so complex indeed that many experts have given up trying to ascertain his value. Marco was estimated to be worth £50m in the Sunday Times rich list for 1999. In 2000 that was down to £35m, and he disappeared altogether the following year. 'I've been unable to see evidence of the profits to justify his inclusion in the list,' said Philip Beresford, who compiles the list, at the time, and Beresford kept him out again this year. In the past Marco has happily allowed the media to describe him as the proprietor of the restaurants in his group.

What's changed is that he no longer does so, preferring instead to refer elliptically to his 'interests in restaurants'. The only thing I could ascertain from his furious scribbling in my notebook is that a share of the companies with which he is involved goes to an offshore trust. He does not own that trust but he does control how that block of shares votes on important issues. As he says, absolutely correctly, he does not own the restaurants. But he has a bloody big say in what happens to them. So far so muddy. Even my hunger for the truth is waning. Lunch arrives, thank God: those potted shrimps to start for me, and just the two starters for him, some Parma ham and a dish of veal tonnato. I suggest we talk about his new saucepan range as much to change the subject as anything else. 'No, let's not talk about pans,' Marco says. Rebecca and Jeremy are bereft. Marco wants to talk about restaurants again, his restaurants. 'I like building restaurants for the people,' he says, grandly. 'I realised I couldn't educate people but I could feed them.' So is that's what he's doing at Frankie's? He nods.

'We're in the business of selling fun at a price point. The food and drink is secondary.' It is, I point out, exactly the opposite of what he would have said when he was in his Harvey's days striving for Michelin stars with dishes like tagliatelle of oysters with caviar and roast Bresse pigeon with ravioli of wild mushrooms and truffle fumet. 'True. I would have said it was all about the food. But I've changed. The world has changed. I have no desire to go to Michelin- starred restaurants any more. I've been there and done that. I like the word eating house. I want to create places for people.' Did he lose his interest in high end gastronomy the day he hung up his apron? 'I think it died way before that, when I won my three stars. Until that it was a way of life. After that it was a job and I don't like jobs. Now I have a way of life again.' He describes himself as a humble man from humble beginnings. Yes, but he must like the trappings of his new life?

'Like?' Like Mr Ishi, his driver waiting outside, like the pub, the big house in Holland Park. He shrugs. 'Not everyone wants a pub. I need a car and I need a house for my kids.' It's as simple as that. He's just a family man, with his wife Mati and their three kids and his country pursuits and all the interests in businesses he doesn't own. What does he think, then, of the current crop of chefs? Time for another cigarette. 'The problem with many chefs today is they want too much too young.' There speaks the youngest three-star chef ever, the man who is credited by many people in the industry with inspiring a huge number of young kids to enter the profession. 'No, not guilty,' Marco says. 'I never tried to be a celebrity chef. I was always in the kitchen.' Indeed he was. And it was there in the kitchen that he was photographed in grainy black and white by Bob Carlos Clark for White Heat, possibly the most influential recipe book of the last 20 years.

There was Marco in grimy apron plating up, or opening scallops, looking every inch the piratical hero, with his long black hair and sunken eyes and high cheek bones, surrendered long ago to his new-found affluence. I have interviewed at least a dozen top-ranking chefs over the years who have cited that book as a huge influence. And not just the food. They wanted the life. The image. Marco's image. Marco refuses to accept that had anything to do with it. 'It was Michelin launching in Britain in 1976. That gave chefs something to aim for.' Rebecca is trying to get us to move onwards to North London where a photographer is waiting for us but Marco is having none of it. He wants another cigarette. He wants another glass of wine. He insists on having pudding. And then an espresso to follow. And make sure it's a big one. It doesn't matter that only half an hour ago he described himself as a stickler for punctuality and that, now, we will be late. 'I'm enjoying this,' he says. He tells me I'm good to talk to, that he enjoys a good back-and-forth chat and irritatingly I find myself flattered.

He is, as I had been warned, strikingly charismatic. He does have a habit of talking in banal Hallmark homilies - 'working hard is an attitude of mind' or even, redundantly 'everything I did is in the past' - and his 'new best mate' shtick is so blatant it's almost funny. He wants to take me fishing. He wants me to go to his pub with him. He wants to eat fi sh with me at Wheeler's, another of the restaurants he doesn't own. Eventually we heave him out the door and, as we drive, Jeremy and Rebecca force him to talk about the pans. For years people have been inviting him to put his name to products, he says, but he hadn't bothered. Then Beka said he could design the pans. So they've come up with five ranges in a variety of finishes from non-stick to luscious brushed copper, which are much easier to keep clean. Though I am usually deeply suspicious of celebrity-endorsed cookware, these are rather lovely: substantial, shapely, as they should be at a starting price of £50 rising to £250.

'A good pan has got to be an extension of you,' he says. 'It's about the feel, the distribution of weight.' But he soon drops away into a morose silence as Jeremy and Rebecca chatter on about how Marco's been out on the road endlessly promoting the pans and about how they really are his designs. The ranges are called White Heat and the promotional material is illustrated with one of the pictures of Marco in his glamorous undernourished youth. Did he not worry that his name wouldn't mean that much to people any more? 'No I didn't think about that,' he says . It doesn't matter, says Jeremy. They're launching in 17 countries, most of which really have never heard of him. Apparently it is just about the pans, then. At the studio, Marco falls quickly into position, fag at lip, Panama hat in place, while our photographer Harry sets to work. I ask him if he enjoys the process. 'No,' Marco says. 'I've been doing this for 20 years. It's a long fucking stint.' He cheers up when Harry suggests Marco and I be photographed together. Immediately Marco says, 'We should hold hands', and he takes mine firmly in his.

So I stand there, shoulder to shoulder with this huge man, thinking we must look like two big gay bears and cursing myself. The whole point of this was not to let him seduce me. I was not meant to be bowled over. Instead I'm standing here looking like I'm now his bitch. And it didn't cost him a single drop of Château d'Yquem, let alone two bottles. I have been firmly Marcoed. It is, I decide, time to go home. · Marco Pierre White's White Heat cookware is available from branches of Debenhams, Selfridges and John Lewis. ( ). Observer review: White Slave by Marco Pierre White | Books | The Guardian by Marco Pierre White Orion £20, pp306 There was a time when Marco Pierre White was famous for cooking tagliatelle with oysters and caviar, a dish hailed by those lucky enough to eat it as one of the single greatest plates of food ever created. But White is a keen follower of fashion, a man alive to the zeitgeist. Accordingly, he is now only famous for being famous. He has entered the celebrity dead zone.

These days, diary stories about him focus less on the restaurants he may or may not own - we'll get to that knotty issue later - but the stand-up rows he likes to have while in them. He is only news when he's shouting, uninteresting when not. Sure, the word 'chef' floats about him but, thanks to the pantomime of Ready Steady Cook, that word now covers a multitude of sins. Apparently, Ainsley Harriott is also a chef. In the public imagination, there is now nothing to separate White and Harriott. They both have something to do with bashing pans. Those of us who care a little bit too much about what we eat can only regard that as a tragedy. There is only one person responsible for this particular tragedy: White himself. In White Slave, the Leeds boy made good strikes a pose of wide-eyed surprise at the sudden interest in him when, almost 20 years ago, his cooking at Harvey's in London's Wandsworth was hailed as something special. But it's clear that he was quickly hungry for the attention and eager to milk it for all it was worth.

He likes to talk loudly of the firsts he achieved: he was the first British-born chef to attain three Michelin stars, for example, and the youngest in the world to do so. In retrospect, his real contribution to British gastronomy may well be that he was the first to be promoted by a PR man, like some wet-lipped pop star. He notes that, as his celebrity grew, he had no role-models. There were no other celebrity chefs. No matter; just as with his cooking, he had the instinct for it. He assumed there was an appetite not just for a re-engineered brand of neoclassical cooking, but for a cartoon figure to cook it. He shouted at his kitchen brigade. He shouted at his customers. He shouted at journalists. Clearly, his modus operandi hasn't changed. How else to explain a one-time chef who allows the subtitle 'the godfather of modern cooking' to adorn his autobiography? That taste for bombast is there on almost every page of the book. White is clear in his own mind that it was the death of his Italian mother when he was six that shaped everything that followed.

Putting aside the breathlessness of the prose that White's fully acknowledged ghost James Steen chisels out for him - Private Eye's parodies seem feeble by comparison - the impact of such an event on a small boy is obvious. But White uses it not merely as explanation, but as justification. Why did he work so hard? Because his mother died. Why did he abuse his chefs? Because his mother died. Why did two of his marriages fail? Because his mother died. Isn't it possible - whisper it - that he is simply not a very nice bloke? At one point, he describes chucking a board full of cheeses at the kitchen wall to humiliate a waiter for failing to prepare them properly. He made his cooks stand in the corner if they displeased him. He shredded their clothes with a knife if they complained about being hot. 'If you don't fear the boss, you'll take shortcuts,' he says, declaring that he needed to do all this to achieve perfection. I know gifted chefs, equally in pursuit of perfection, who would rather work for Ginsters than treat their staff like that. He believes in the cult of the alpha male. He adored Oliver Reed.

He's the kind of man who admiringly calls the drinking habits of his PR man Alan Crompton-Batt 'amazing'. It wasn't amazing. It was disastrous. Crompton-Batt died two years ago because of his addiction to alcohol. I met White for the first time only last year. Now he is a restaurateur, though what that actually means is shrouded in mystery. I spent most of that day trying to get him to explain whether he owned the restaurants to which his name is attached. He told me he owned nothing and his accounts of his restaurants - Mirabelle, Quo Vadis, L'Escargot and so on - were no more revealing. White Slave is not about to explain it. One day, he is a chef. The next, he starts buying restaurants. At no point does he say where the cash to do so came from. But that is not the point of the book. Although there is some good, chewy stuff buried deep in here on kitchen life and the work of mentors such as Albert Roux, Pierre Koffman and Raymond Blanc, who emerges as the greatest influence, it is mostly about settling scores.

He revels in explaining why he fell out with numerous people, never to speak to them ever again, not least of whom is his one-time protege, Gordon Ramsay. Intriguingly he claims that, in the early days of Ramsay's first restaurant, Aubergine, the kitchen wasn't up to scratch. 'My chefs cooked a lot of the food for Aubergine and his boys came over to collect it,' he says. Ramsay's organisation say it was only a few lemon tarts. They point out that Ramsay's autobiography, Humble Pie, in which he describes what he did for Marco's restaurants, is published next month. Dear God, there's more to come? Even the most voracious of appetites may find this more than they can stomach. Chopping Block Reality SeriesRoamilicious Home Books and Information The Chopping Block Reality Show Premieres Tonight on NBC The Chopping Block Reality Show Premieres Tonight on NBC Like Set your DVRs. The Chopping Block, a new cooking reality series TV show is set to premiere tonight on NBC at 8 PM. The Chopping Block is hosted by Marco Pierre White, celebrity chef and one of the most revered Chef’s in the UK.

White also hosts the famous Hell’s Kitchen in the UK. The Chopping Block is similar to Last Restaurant Standing which currently airs on BBC America, with nine couples competing in a series of challenges designed to see if they can run their own restaurant. At the end of each season, the winning team opens their own new restaurant, with financial and personal backing from the show’s star, French-born restaurateur Raymond Blanc. Set in Manhattan, this new reality series, is a little different than just pitting talented chefs against each other. The contestants much not only come up with fantastic culinary meals, but they must also, redesign and empty restaurant space, plan an entire menu, and market the restaurant opening to ensure a crowd on opening night. Contestants (made up of friends, relatives and married couples) are split into 2 groups of 4 couples each. At the end of each episode one couple is eliminated. Judges are food critics from all over. The grand prize? $250,000. About the Chef Marco Pierre White born in Leeds in 1961, he was the youngest ever and first British born chef to win three Michelin stars.

He currently operates eight hugely popular restaurants in London and is expanding to other cities throughout the world. He has also authored several books including an autobiography. He has acted as a mentor to other celebrity chefs such as Gordon Ramsay, however his demeanor is somewhat different. While Gordon Ramsay’ s loud, cruel, insulting and just plain rude rants leave contestestants on Hell’s Kitchen in tears, White is more quiet and can put people on notice by simply raising his eyebrow. Seems like the show will be a mix of American Idol / The Apprentice with a twist of Iron Chef. The Devil in the Kitchen : Marco Pierre White : 9781596914971 The Devil in the Kitchen Food & Drink Review quote Praise for "The Devil in the Kitchen": "A moving, unaffected, delightfully honest book. At times it's almost sweet. The culinary memoir it most recalls is, of all things, Jacques Pepin's "Apprentice." Like Pepin, White grew up in a family that had little but appreciation of good food.

And like "the apprentice," white's book has early moments of heartbreaking privation and loss that give way to happy momentum-a dawning on the protagonist's part and eventually, on that of his bosses, peers and public, that he is perpetually gifted at cooking...Even as White recounts these tales, though he does so without sensationalism or self-congratulation...he 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."--David Kamp, "New York Times Book Review" "Marco will always remain the epitome of the wicked, talented, flamboyant chef---the archetype made flesh. And really, would we want him any other way?"--"Independent" "There hasn't been a food memoir this deliciously wicked since Anthony Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential.,."but White's story ultimately proves more compelling because he's willing to expose his flaws instead of hiding behind cynicism.

And I learned more about what it's like to cook in a restaurant kitchen than from any other book I've read."--"Portland"" Oregonian" "The original enfant terrible of the kitchen....One can feel White's influence not only in his gastronomic legacy, but also in the wild-boy posturing of the volatile celebrity chefs who now populate our televisions."--"Guardian" Praise for Marco Pierre White: "Marco Pierre Whitewas the original rock-star chef--the guy who all of us wanted to be. From the moment my chef pals and I got a look at his first cookbook--and at photos of the Man Himself, in all his haggard, debauched-looking, obsessively driven glory-- we dreamed of nothing more than to be just like him. He made history."--Anthony Bourdain "Marco is a gift to humanity, with more passion per pound than anyone else I have ever met. His story is genius, his voice his own and the tale retold is just as much fun as it was watching the whole chaotic conundrum evolve the first time around.

His sophisticated cooking came out of nowhere but inside his rock star head, and this autobiography makes it all clear in the juiciest and most delicious way. After all these years, Marco is still my hero."--Mario Batali "Marco is probably the most charismatic chef of the twentieth century: the last of the romantics, a brooding Bryon of the kitchen, the most creative person youll ever meet and the most self-destructive, a self-described monster and an unrecognized poet, and, without question, the most influential British chef since the invention of fish and chips. Nobody has found so much meaning -so much passion and outright an intensity of feeling - in a plate of food." - Bill Buford, author of "Heat" show more About Marco Pierre White Born in Leeds in 1961, Marco Pierre White was the first British chef (and the youngest chef anywhere) to win three Michelin starts. His gastronomic empire Luciano and Marco's restaurants, among others is rapidly expanding to include ventures in Las Vegas, Shanghai, Jamaica, and Dubai, with more in the works. Through he retired from the kitchen in 1999, White recently returned to the stove to serve as the host of Hell's Kitchen.

He lives in West London with his wife, Mati, and their three children. He also has a daughter by his first wife.As a gossip columnist in the late eighties, James Steen phoned Harveys to speak with Marco Pierre White. A maitre d' answered the phone and ranted on in a strong French accent about how White was "a monster, a crazy man, a lunatic to work for." The "maitre d'," it transpired, was White. The relationship went from there. Steen, a freelance journalist, lives a short stroll from what was once Harveys, with his wife, Louise, and three children, Charlie, Billy, and Daisy." show more Follow us Marco Pierre White (Chef) - Pics, Videos, Dating, & News Marco Pierre White Male Born Dec 11, 1961 Marco Pierre White is a British celebrity chef, restaurateur and television personality. He is noted for his contributions to contemporary international cuisine, and his exceptional culinary skills. White has been dubbed the first celebrity chef, the enfant terrible of the UK restaurant scene and the Godfather of modern cooking. White was, at the time, the youngest chef ever to have been awarded three Michelin stars.

He has trained chefs such as Gordon Ramsay.… Read More related links Oil States See Slumping Employment As Texas Loses 25,000 Jobs In March Wall Street Journal - Apr 21, 2015 ' \n \n \n \n \n While the U.S. economy continued to add jobs last month, states that rely heavily on the oil industry experienced significant cuts. Job losses hit particularly hard in Texas (down 25,400 jobs) and Oklahoma (down 12,900), leading the nation in losses.Â North Dakota lost 3,000 jobs, a significant cut in such a small state. \n The decline in oil prices has provided a windfall for consumers who are paying less at the pump. But the plunge is now hurting the states that had benefite... Here's Who Is Helping Women Forced Into Prostitution, Teen Pregnancy During Ebola Outbreak Huffington Post - Feb 20, 2015 'The U.N. is optimistic that West Africa can hit zero Ebola cases by mid-April, but vulnerable girls in the region are facing a new debilitating epidemic -- a spike in teen pregnancy and prostitution.

\n \nDue to prolonged school closings and widespread deaths of parents and caregivers, girls in Sierra Leone and Liberia -- two of the hardest-hit regions -- have become more susceptible to sexual exploitation and experts say itâs up to on-the-ground agencies to better protect them. \n \n\"Our ... Listening With Pleasure Huffington Post - Feb 06, 2014 'In the 15 years since I took that first step on my apron journey, I\'ve received many aprons in the mail. Always, the aprons are lovingly packaged, as to make the best first impression upon arrival. \nWhen I spy a large envelope in the mail delivery, my heart beats a tad faster because I anticipate the package holds a piece of someone\'s history. Such a package arrived this week. \nThe apron was double wrapped, first in yellow tissue with the sender\'s information handwritten on a piece of... Learn about the memorable moments in the evolution of Marco Pierre White. CHILDHOOD 1961 Birth Born on December 11, 1961.

TWENTIES 1987 25 Years Old In 1987, White opened Harvey's in Wandsworth Common, London, where he won his first Michelin star almost immediately and was awarded his second in 1988. … Read More He later become chef-patron of The Restaurant Marco Pierre White in the dining room at the former Hyde Park Hotel, where he won the third Michelin star), and then moved to the Oak Room at the Le MÃ©ridien Piccadilly Hotel.<br /><br /> By the age of 33, Marco Pierre White had become the first British chef to be awarded three Michelin stars. At 33 he was one of the youngest chefs to win three stars.<br /><br /> Although White worked for 17 years to pursue his ambition, he ultimately found that, in spite of his accomplishments, recognition and fame, his career did not provide him with adequate returns in his personal life. Read Less 1988 26 Years Old White has been married three times. His first wife was Alex McArthur, who was the daughter of a surgeon from Buckinghamshire, and who worked at his local fishmonger.

They were married at Chelsea Register Office on 8 June 1988. 1990 28 Years Old He has a daughter Letitia, from the 2 year marriage, which ended in 1990. White then met 21-year-old model Lisa Butcher at a London nightclub. They were engaged within three weeks. Engaged for two months, Butcher sold the wedding in a Â£20,000 deal to Hello! magazine. The wedding took place at the Brompton Oratory on 15 August 1992. … Read More White says he knew the marriage was a mistake when he saw her Â£3,000 floor-length, backless Bruce Oldfield dress with cutaway sides. Read Less THIRTIES 1992 30 Years Old In 1992, White began a relationship with Matilde Conejero, the bartender at The Canteen. and went on to have two sons. The couple married at the Belvedere on 7 April 2000. … Read More After White became friends with city financier Robin Saunders, Conejero wrongly suspected an affair between the two.

White and his wife had a fight, after which White spent 14 hours in the cells of Notting Hill police station in January 2005. Read Less Show Less So, in 1999 he retired and returned his Michelin stars. … Read More During his early career in the kitchen, White regularly ejected patrons from his restaurants if he took offence at their comments.<br /><br /> When a customer 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 Â£25 for his time. A young chef at Harveys, who once complained of heat in the kitchen, had the back of his chef's jacket and trousers cut open by White wielding a sharp paring knife.<br /><br /> Marco is seen in UK adverts for Knorr stock cubes and stock pots, a Unilever brand. In answer to criticisms that he'd "sold himself out as a chef" by acting as a brand ambassador for such products he said, "by working with companies like Knorr it allows me to stand onto a bigger stage and enrich people's lives...

Michelin stars, they're my past." Read Less White announced his retirement from the kitchen in 1999 and cooked his final meal for a paying customer on 23 December at the Oak Room. … Read More After his retirement he became a restaurateur. Together with Jimmy Lahoud, he set up White Star Line Ltd which they operated together for several years before ending their partnership in 2007.<br /><br /> In 2008, White opened the MPW Steak & Alehouse with James Robertson in the Square Mile in London. As co-owners, since 2010 they have also operated the Kings Road Steakhouse & Grill in Chelsea. Read Less James Robertson had worked for White as a maÃ®tre d', between 1999 and 2003. … Read More Since May 2016 the two restaurants have become the London Steakhouse Co, a successful partnership and are, as of May 2016, the only restaurants worldwide in which White is a major shareholder.

"Marco Pierre White - Steakhouse Bar & Grill" and "Marco's New York Italian by Marco Pierre White" are franchised brands operated by third parties which have outlets in various hotels throughout the UK.<br /><br /> White had a stake in the Yew Tree Inn, a 17th-century dining pub near Highclere in Hampshire, although following an acrimonious falling out with his business partners the pub was sold. This was the setting for much of "Marco's Great British Feast," screened on ITV in the summer of 2008. In January 2009, it was reported that White was to charge Â£5 for a pint of real ale at the venue, making the Yew Tree "one of the most expensive places to drink British real ale in the country". White was quoted saying "Most pubs undercharge. You're not just paying for beer, you're paying for the place you drink it in and the people who serve it." Read Less FORTIES Show Less MasterChef Australia On 7 July 2011, White was a guest judge on Masterchef Australia mentoring the cooks in an elimination round.

… Read More On 15 June 2014, White began a week-long appearance on Masterchef Australia presiding over a mystery box challenge, an invention test and a pressure test. Read Less Celebrity Big Brother 2011 On 27 August 2011, White was a houseguest on the UK version of Celebrity Big Brother to set a cooking task. In 2011 the divorce proceedings were withdrawn but in October 2012 White and Conejero separated again. … Read More White is a supporter of the Conservative Party. and Manchester City Football Club. Read Less FIFTIES 2012 50 Years Old Marco Pierre White's Kitchen Wars In 2012, White fronted a new show for Channel 5 called Marco Pierre White's Kitchen Wars. … Read More It saw the UK's best restaurant partnerships balance food with front of house service, fighting for a place in a specially designed studio restaurant, where the top couples are each given their own kitchen and set of diners to impress. It received mostly positive reviews from critics.

Read Less 2013 51 Years Old MasterChef Australia: The Professionals 2013 White is a principal judge in this competition between professional chefs, which started 20 January 2013. … Read More White co-hosts the show with regular MasterChef Australia host Matt Preston. Read Less 2014 52 Years Old MasterChef South Africa On 11 December 2014, White appeared on the South African version of MasterChef which aired on M-Net. A devil in the kitchen | The Times A devil in the kitchen Google+ Published at 12:00AM, September 1 2007 Marco Pierre White is feeling the heat again as he steps back into the limelight in Hell’s Kitchen. He tells Celia Dodd how nature, fishing and time with his family saved him from his private hell Marco Pierre White, the original bad-boy chef, is back. After eight years away from cooking, he’s the new star of Hell’s Kitchen – the ITV show originally imprinted on the national psyche by his former proteg? Gordon Ramsay.

At 33, White was the youngest chef ever to be awarded three Michelin stars, the first British-born chef to achieve this, and he later made history by giving them back. His unpredictable rages, his Byronic curls and his hectic love life were equally legendary. He ejected diners for doing little more than asking to choose their own cheese and feuded bitterly with Subscribe now Wild Food From Land and Sea » Melville House Books Wild Food From Land and Sea Marco Pierre White “Marco Pierre White is the original rock-star chef, the guy all of us wanted to be.” —Anthony Bourdain What do Mario Batali, Heston Blumenthal, and Gordon Ramsay have in common? Answer: They all survived tours of duty in the kitchen of legendary Marco Pierre White. In the UK, White’s brilliant cooking and high-wattage antics have made him an absolute legend: the first British chef (and, at the time, the youngest chef anywhere) to win three Michelin stars, a chain-smoking, pot-throwing, multiply-married culinary genius-the man that many consider the original celebrity chef. Published in U.S.

for the first time, Wild Food From Land and Sea is White’s most refined vision of gastronomy-the product of thirty years in the kitchen. Here we get a glimpse into the intensive, highly disciplined kitchens in which White’s supremely refined food was conjured. There are wild reinventions of French classics, and the playful introduction of strange and surprising ingredients. All told Wild Food From Land and Sea contains 80 recipes, and nearly a hundred basic lessons, making it an important addition to any kitchen. MARCO PIERRE WHITE was born in Leeds in 1961. After learning his trade at the Box Tree in Ilkley, Le Gavroche, La Tante Claire and Le Manoir, he opened his first restaurant, Harvey’s, in 1987. He went on to open several more restaurants before becoming the first British chef to win three Michelin stars at Hyde Park Hotel. More honors followed before, at 38, he retired from the kitchen and began to build a career as a hugely successful businessman. His many restaurants include Mirabelle, Drones, L’Escargot, and the Belvedere. Recent Related Posts

Question: Who was the first British-born chef, and at the time the youngest ever, to win three Michelin Stars?
Answer: Marco Pierre White