Read The Devil in the Kitchen Online
Authors: Marco Pierre White
He glanced up to see what I was talking about, and the skinhead growled at Gordon, “What are you looking at?” It turned ugly quickly. Gordon received a headbutt but came back with a powerful right hook. The two men grabbed each other and danced around a little before falling down toward the pavement, during which Gordon banged his head against a parked car. The next thing I knew, Gordon’s brother Ronnie emerged from the restaurant, where he had a kitchen job, and began kicking the hell out of the skinhead. I tried to break it up and when the fight was eventually over, the skinhead picked himself up, dusted himself off and staggered away. Gordon stood to his feet, dazed and severely confused.
Gordon was not only becoming a famous chef but was also on his way to launching a TV career. He became the subject of a fly-on-the wall documentary called
Boiling Point
, which showed the British public just what it was like to work in a manic kitchen. When the crew said they’d like to film Gordon enjoying a day off, he phoned me to say, “I’ve told them I always go fishing with you.”
I said, “But that’s rubbish, Gordon.”
“I know, but I’ve told them, so can we go fishing?”
We headed off to Marlow weir and that’s where it became clear that he didn’t even know how to tackle up. I played along with his fib, whispering instructions to him so that the producer couldn’t hear. Then to amuse myself I set his line at ten foot deep when the water was only eight feet deep. This meant that his line was lying on the riverbed and the best he’d catch would be a rusty tin. He nearly slipped over several times and was petrified when he walked across the weir. I caught ten fish. Gordon caught zilch. When it was time to leave, the mystified producer buttonholed me and said, “Has Gordon ever fished before?”
“Lots,” I replied.
O
NE DAY IN
the summer of 1996, Alan Crompton-Batt told me the Prince of Wales wanted me to cook for him. Of course it’s a privilege to be asked to cook for a member of the royal family, but it was to be a grand affair and Vanessa Mae would be there, playing her violin to entertain Charles’s two hundred guests. The menu was not scary— it was summer, so I decided on a very English affair—but the performing-seal prospect seemed chilling. I’d have to be very clever with my timing. I’d have to arrive just in time to do the starters (Ballotine of Salmon with Herbs and Langoustines) and escape as the main course (Sorrel d’Agneau à l’Anglaise) was being picked up from the passe. It was crucial that I wasn’t there to see out the dessert, Jelly of Red Fruits, otherwise I’d be dragged out to meet the Prince and his guests.
I sat with my driver in my Range Rover on the road outside High-grove, smoking my way through Marlboros and watching the dashboard clock. I didn’t want to be paraded. In the grounds, Charles would be greeting his guests, and in the kitchen adjoining the tent, my team would be waiting for me to arrive, give the orders and dish out the bollockings. And then, just when the time seemed right, we drove up to the gates and security waved us in. I got out of the car and that’s when I was nabbed. One of the Prince’s aides grabbed me and I was whisked off to meet Charles. This was what I didn’t want. But they knew the gig, didn’t they? They knew Marco always ran away after the main course so as to avoid the backslapping.
The heir to the throne gave me a confident handshake, smiled warmly and then said, “Bonjour Monsieur White . . .” For three minutes I listened to his monologue, each and every word of it in French. I just nodded along—it would have been rude to interrupt—then when he finished, he handed me a little collection of books about Highgrove, each of them inscribed to “Monsieur Pierre White.”
I had to tell him. “I’m terribly sorry, sir,” I said, “but I’m not French. I grew up on a council estate in Leeds . . .”
He looked at his assistant, as if to say, You’ve fucking done it this time, boy. You’ve made me feel like the biggest prick in history. I had my picture taken standing beside a red-faced prince and then off I went, into the kitchen to cook.
I
HAD WON
three Michelin stars but my race was not yet finished. I realized that in fact the finishing post was a little farther on. As far as stars are concerned, three is the highest you can go.
Stars are awarded for what is on the plate, but what about Michelin’s
couverts
? In the guides you see them as little pictures of crossed knives and forks, which is why they’re known in the restaurant profession as “knives and forks.” They are awarded for pleasantness, luxury, aesthetics and ambience. To get five of them, and five red ones rather than black ones, became my new obsession. The Oak Room in London’s Meridien Hotel would take me there. It would win not only three stars but also the five red knives and forks, which, according to the guide, made it the finest restaurant in Britain. Others had won stars, but no other restaurant before or since the Oak Room has been awarded a beautiful, complete row of red. Waterside, Gavroche and Tante Claire have only ever managed four.
The room itself has to have been one of the greatest rooms in the world. With its ballroom grandness, majestic mirrors, gentle lighting and generous space between tables, it’s like stepping into an illusion. The Oak Room was a temple of gastronomy. It was about perfection rather than creation—making the greatest Oeufs en Nage, the finest Roast Pineapple. It was perfection, from the amuse-gueules to the starter, from the main course to the pre-dessert, the cheese to the coffee and proper chocolates. It was an
event
. The wine list was the finest in Britain. Every available vintage of Mouton Rothschild was there for you to drink, if you had the money. Other three-star restaurants might have had two or three vintages of Pétrus. Here we had Pétrus that went back a century, seventy or eighty different vintages. The wine list included a five-page list of Château d’Yquem, taking you right back to 1850. The vintages and prices were all beautifully written in pencil so that each page was visually attractive. It used to take a wine waiter about three weeks to write out the list.
Dishes were carried from the kitchen on silver platters and the meat was carved at the table. The pigeon, for instance, would be taken out to the table, where the staff had two minutes to put it on the plate before the vegetables came out. Even if you weren’t eating pigeon, you certainly got to enjoy the show.
When a lady took her seat, a tiny table was placed beside her for her to put her handbag on so she didn’t need to put it on the floor. How many restaurants have a seat for your handbag? If a customer paid in cash, he received his change in brand-new notes and coins. We did not do crushed, creased fivers and dirty fifty-pence pieces. The notes were wrinkle-free, the coins untarnished and sparkling.
I had been inspired by great French restaurants even though I’d never been to one, and with the Oak Room I set out to re-create the sophistication I imagined Parisians experienced. It had to be the ultimate experience, and I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to pull it off. In August 1997 I transferred my three stars from the Hyde Park to the Oak Room, where I had six weeks to get the place in shape before opening.
I took the brigade from the Hyde Park, loyal boys who had given me everything and who had traveled with me all the way from Harveys. From one star to three stars and now even further. We became an even stronger team. There were probably twenty-five in the brigade, that’s twenty-five cooking for seventy customers. Robert Reid was my head chef and there were five sous chefs. If we had a table of six at the Oak Room, six cooks would do six dishes, so timing was crucial. Front of house, I had six wine waiters, four maître d’hotels and two head waiters in suits—twelve people, six of them in black.
Of the Oak Room, I have only one memory of imperfection. On a Saturday night in December 1997, a customer beckoned Pierre Bordelli, the restaurant manager. He had a complaint. The man pointed toward the ceiling above him and said, “One of the lamp bulbs in the chandelier up there has gone.” Pierre looked up and then back at the customer, who added, “It needs replacing.”
Pierre was confused. “I’m sorry, sir. Are you saying that a blown lamp bulb is ruining your evening?” The man nodded, “That’s precisely what I am saying. What’s more, you’ve got two other bulbs that need replacing in other chandeliers.”
Pierre came into the kitchen and told me the story. “Get him out,” I said. “Pull him.” The customer’s foie gras starter was just on its way to the table when Pierre approached the table, pulled it toward him and said, “Mr. White says he is terribly sorry your evening has been ruined. Please go.”
Meanwhile, the boys—my brigade—may well have worked hard, but they never lost their ability to play hard too. It was an hour before lunch and I walked into the Oak Room’s kitchen, ready for service, only to find the place was virtually empty. There were one or two cooks there from way down the hierarchy, but no sign of the others. “Where the fuck is everyone?” I said. “We’re going to have people at their tables in two seconds’ time. Where the fucking fuck is everyone?” And then they told me. It transpired that the night before, the boys had finished service and gone off for a few drinks at Break for the Border, one of those overcrowded cattlemarkets where the queue for the bar is ten-men thick and punters scream chat-up lines above the thud of the music. There had been a punch-up. One of the chefs had ended up with a broken arm and the others emerged from the scrap as bruised, bloodied, hobbling invalids. I think they were all still down at ER, being nursed, stitched up and given prescriptions for painkillers. If you were one of the customers who had to wait for your main course that day, then I’m sorry, but the blame lies with the lager at Break for the Border.
Refining, refining. At the Oak Room, I had reached a level where I would start to wonder where refinement of a dish would end. And of course the road to perfection is never ending.
For example, in the kitchen at the Oak Room, every morning we would roast thirty-six chickens just for their juices, rather than for the meat.
We’d roast the birds, take them out of the oven and put them into a colander, then press them so the juices flooded out, which were collected in a tin underneath. Then the chicken went back into the pan and the whole thing—bird and pan—was covered in plastic wrap, because the steam coming from a cooked chicken creates even more juice.
Once all the natural juices were captured, the roasting trays were deglazed, first with a drop of Madeira, which dissolves, and then a splash of water was added and the sediment dissolved into it. The juice extracted by squashing the chickens then went into the pan, together with a tiny spoonful of veal stock—not to give flavor but to add body.
The thirty-six squeezed chickens could not be served, of course, because they were too dry, so they would go in the bin or end up as staff lunches. It might seem like a waste to you, but if you were a customer, that’s what you were paying for— pure chicken juices. Thirty-six chickens provided enough juices for thirty portions of freshly cooked chicken. In other words, the customer had the juice of more than one whole chicken accompanying his dish. We’d do the same thing with lamb shoulders, roasting them slowly for sediment and then pressing them just for the juices.
It was extreme. As part of that refinement I virtually stopped using veal stock in sauces like jus blond and jus de volaille because I felt it was too big and strong and dominated everything else.
In January 1998, little more than four months after we had opened the Oak Room, the
Michelin Guide
came out. We had retained three stars and been awarded five red knives and forks. That’s not all. The Oak Room received nineteen out of twenty in the influential French guide
Gault Millau
(no restaurant had ever scored twenty out of twenty). Egon Ronay’s guide awarded us three (out of three) stars. We got ten out of ten in the
Good Food Guide
, and the
AA Guide
declared that the restaurant was worthy of five rosettes, its highest award. There was not a single British restaurant which had ever achieved such accolades in one year, and hasn’t been since. We had won the Grand Slam in British gastronomy. I felt as if I was perched on top of the highest mountain. I could go no further.
A
MID ALL THIS,
another great change came in my life. The news came by phone, a call from my brother Clive at about half past nine in the morning. “Dad’s had a stroke,” he said. The old man was dying. Mati and I put the two boys in the car and headed up the M1 to Leeds and 22 Lingfield Mount. It was Friday, September 12, 1997, a couple of weeks after the opening of the Oak Room. The sense of accomplishment that comes with launching a restaurant was suddenly drowned, of course, by the numbness that accompanies loss.
A sofa bed had been set up for Dad in the front room and he was lying there, dipping in and out of consciousness. He should probably have been in hospital, but he’d always wanted to die at home, in his small two-bed semi, and it seemed as though his wish was being granted. His wife, Hazel, was there, as well as my brothers Graham and Clive and a doctor. “He’d just had his breakfast when it happened,” said Clive.
Luciano went up to Dad, kissed him on the cheek and said, “Love you, Grandpa.” The old man had been out cold, but at this point he opened his eyes and whispered back to his three-year-old grandson, “You too.” He would live to see just another day, but those two words were the last I heard him speak. Mati, the boys and I drove into the center of Leeds and checked into the Queens Hotel, where my father had trained as a chef, starting out as a boy. It was the first time I’d ever set foot in the building (the second and final time was when Granada took me for a tour). The next morning, a Saturday, I wanted a distraction, so I took Luciano for a stroll in the city center to buy the newspapers. I stepped onto the street and looked up. The sky was crystal blue and the sun shone brightly, and I was instantly reminded of that February day—another Saturday—back in 1968 when I last saw my mother. I knew then that this would be the last day of my father’s life.