The Devil in the Kitchen (31 page)

Libel actions in Britain can take a while to come to court, but in the meantime the
New York Times
set about trying to prove its lie. They hired private detectives in an attempt to dig up some dirt, and Gordon Ramsay, by now an accomplished chef and restaurateur, got a call from someone saying she was a journalist who worked for the
New
York Times
. The reporter asked him about the period during which he worked for me at Harveys. Did he have a wild time there? That sort of thing. When she referred to “sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll,” he ended the call. Other people I knew also got phone calls.

A couple of weeks before the case was due to start, the two papers conceded that the allegations were false. I wasn’t in the mood for settling out of court, and as the hearing drew closer, they reassessed the grounds of their defense and decided they would argue that the piece, though inaccurate, had not affected my reputation.

The most pleasurable part of an otherwise draining experience was meeting George Carman, my QC for the case. Knowing George was one of the greatest educations of my life; he was a huge influence and had that rare combination of intelligence and instinct. Apart from having a good brain, he had a way of speaking that left you, and the jury, mesmerized.

We gathered at the High Court on April 3, 2000—two years after the offending article had appeared in print—and on day one I went into the box. It is customary for the claimant’s QC to question you in a relaxing manner before the defendant’s QC does a nasty cross-examination. So George was there to warm me up, make me feel settled.

However, his opening questions went like this:

CARMAN
: Were you brought up on a Leeds council estate?

ME
: Yes, I was.

CARMAN
: Did you watch your mother die at the age of six?

ME
: Yes, I did.

CARMAN
: Did your father get lung cancer and was given just months to live?

He was drawing a picture for the jury, a picture of a boy from humble beginnings who has fought for everything he’s got in life and who is a working-class hero, and then here’s the
New York Times
trying to run him down. But I was floored. It was harder answering George’s questions than it was being cross-examined by Geoffrey Robertson QC.

Geoffrey Robertson was keen to tie me up in knots, but I kept saying, “I don’t understand your question,” or, “Can you please repeat that?” The jury was amused. I’d chuck in things like, “Could I have some water, please?” Then proceedings would halt while I had a sip to clear my throat.

I’d answer the question really quietly and he’d say, “Sorry?” I was driving him mad. He said something like, “Were you once described as the ‘Jagger of the Aga.’ ”

I said, “Aga?”

He started telling me what an Aga was and I told him I knew what one was—I had one at home—but what did he say before Aga? Cue laughter from the judge and jury.

There were other moments of levity. Geoffrey Robertson buttonholed me one morning to say, “I dined in your restaurant Quo Vadis last night. I had the most delicious risotto I’ve ever eaten in my life.” I didn’t know how to respond.

George’s closing speech was everything you’d expect from a genius. His reputation was one of a master orator. George was a short man, but as his son Dominic said after George’s death in January 2001, “With his stage as a courtroom and his audience as the jury, he was a giant among men.” The court was hushed, the jury undoubtedly excited about what was to come. Sit down with the popcorn, the lights are dimming, the big movie is about to begin . . .

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, once upon a time there was a bad, bad boy in the kitchen and the bad, bad boy had the infernal cheek to sue two powerful international newspapers, and they were called the
New York Times
and the
International Herald Tribune
. Of course, it was a claim that should never have been brought because it never was a libel, they had nothing to apologize for, they had no damages to pay and they had done him no harm. They had not hurt his feelings and they had, in fact, done him a great favor. The great favor was to employ private investigators, go round amongst his friends and acquaintances, investigate whether he had, in fact, taken any illegal drugs . . .

Of course, this is a fairy tale. That is what no doubt the
International Herald Tribune
and the
New York Times
would like to publish about this case, as they would like to publish many things, but we can come to the real world and the real case.

. . . I started off with a fairy tale, “the bad boy in the kitchen.” Why was that brought out by Mr. Robertson? “You’ve got a reputation as a bad, bad boy in the kitchen.” Was that intended as some kind of slur that would cause you, the jury, to award him less damages in some way? What does it mean, not just “bad” but “bad, bad boy in the kitchen”? It was repeated like you’d say to a small child, “You naughty, naughty boy” . . . It was all about him, Marco Pierre White, bawling out the staff to get the food on the table, which I am jolly sure he does. You cannot say when six people are paying a lot of money for dinner, “Would you all mind, please, just getting the plates together, to put them carefully on the table there? Would you be so kind as to attend to your duties?” Of course not. Of course he bawls out, with a few emotive words, no doubt. “Get moving. Get the stuff on the table,” or whatever phrase he uses. He would not be the great chef he has been and is if he was not able to give clear orders and get his discipline operating on his staff. There is the great discipline of the kitchens involved, kitchens in excellence.

After an adjournment Geoffrey Robertson argued that even if the story was false, my reputation not been damaged because, as he said, “You would not dream of refusing his food or his company after reading this article. You might shrink from his bill, but not from Mr. White himself.” He wanted to give the jury an idea of the size of damages awarded in British courts:

Of course, if Mr. White, during his conversation with Miss Fabricant, she had somehow got angry with him and cut his hand off, he would get under the current standards, about forty-five thousand pounds. Well, that is a matter that you may think would cause great anger and distress and, of course, permanent disfigurement. That is the sort of money that is the going rate. There is another personal injury matter that I imagine would be very worrying for a chef: if Miss Fabricant had wielded her knife or fork in such a way as accidentally to have stuck it in his nostrils or tongue and destroyed his taste buds so that he could never as a chef smell or taste again, that would get him, on the going rate, some nine thousand to twelve thousand pounds . . .

The jury adjourned on Wednesday, April 5. They were not out for long before returning to announce that they had opted to send George’s suggested message across the Atlantic to the editors of the U.S. papers. They awarded me a settlement of £75,000: £15,000 from the
Times
and £60,000 from the
Tribune
. According to Mr. Robertson’s figures, that was the equivalent of Florence cutting off one of my hands and chopping off maybe a finger and thumb from the other hand. Plus, of course, costs of about half a million.

TWENTY-FOUR

Letting Go of Status

T
HIS SLAVE HAD
been a slave for twenty-one years. Although I had spent a career questioning the way I cooked; I had never really questioned
why
I cooked; I just did it. When I finally made up my mind that I wanted freedom—wanted out—the chains were released pretty swiftly. For a while I’d been thinking about it, contemplating retirement as I continued to spend long days and nights at the stove or by the passe.

Several factors contributed to my decision to hang up the apron. They included the realization that I had sacrificed everything in order to be in a kitchen, locked away from the outside world. Obviously, I had to give more time to Mati and the kids. Mati was the only person I talked to about retiring, and she was behind my decision, as you might expect of a wife who rarely sees her husband. In the kitchen I had three stars, but at home I had another three: Mati, Luciano and Marco. When I’d get home from work, they would be asleep: we tended to meet when Mati brought them into the kitchen and they would sit on the passe fifteen minutes before lunch service began. We hadn’t had the time to build a proper foundation to our life and relationship. Before we knew what we were doing—less than two and a half years into the relationship—we were two young people with two kids. We didn’t go off partying and having fun like most young people do. I just worked and worked and worked, and then slept when I had a day off. And Mati would pop into the restaurants. That was our existence. I didn’t question it. I was so obsessed with my work, so tunnel-visioned, that nothing else played a part, but I was beginning to accept that I would have to give something back to Mati and the kids.

Meanwhile, ever since I had won the three stars, my relationship with Albert Roux had been a bit unstable. Dear old Albert, the Gavroche general, good friend, first boss in London, mentor and best man at my second wedding. But these days when he phoned it was usually to ask only if I had heard any trade gossip and there was something that made me question his loyalty. We had lunch one day at the Connaught and I decided to check him out. He asked me about a certain issue, which I knew all about, but rather than give him the full story, I told him a little bit of the truth and a few white lies. The following day I got a phone call from a reporter who appeared to know everything I had told Albert, including the fibs. Of course, it’s possible Albert may have told someone who, in turn, told someone else who informed the reporter. From then on I believed, rightly or wrongly, that I couldn’t trust Albert.

He was a giant in the industry, a man who helped change gastronomy and take it forward. Albert is revered and his influence immense, but I was very close to him for a while and I saw another side to him.

I used to go to his house in the countryside and one year I went to spend Christmas with him and his lovely wife, Monique. Albert and I were fishing for carp when he suddenly turned to me and announced, “Do you know, Marco, nine out of ten people in the catering industry are cunts?” I was stunned. Here was this figurehead, a man I had put on a pedestal, letting me see what lay beneath the statesmanlike exterior.

Our friendship finally came to an end in the late nineties after Albert was invited to be a judge for the Catey Awards, the annual ceremony held by the
Caterer and Hotelkeeper
magazine. I was at Mirabelle when I got a call from Gordon Ramsay, who had a friend at the magazine. Gordon said, “They’re quite disgusted at the
Caterer
.”

“Why’s that?”

“They had the judging for Chef of the Year and you were going to get it, but Albert started saying, ‘We can’t give it to Marco Pierre White. It would be bad for the industry to give him Chef of the Year.’ You’re not going to get the award.”

For years I had listened to Albert criticizing other chefs and now he was criticizing me.

So I phoned him and said, “Albert, you were judging Chef of the Year yesterday for the Catey Awards and it has come back to me that you said it would be wrong to give Marco Pierre White Chef of the Year. And you said that Marco Pierre White is bad for the industry. Is that right, Albert?”

Albert came back with, “I signed a confidentiality agreement.”

“I didn’t ask if you’d signed a confidentiality agreement, Albert. I asked if you said those words.”

“Marco,” he said, “I don’t want to have this conversation with you.”

I last saw Albert a couple of years ago, when I arrived at the Sofitel hotel in London for a meeting. Albert and I came face-to-face in the foyer. He looked at me and I looked at him. “Good morning,” I said. He froze and didn’t say a word, then he looked straight at the door and strutted off. He did a lot for the industry and you can’t knock him for that. He also did a lot for me, so I have tremendous regret about the way it ended.

Meanwhile, I had lost respect for Michelin. There was an episode that sounds quite silly now but at the time became something of a preoccupation. Derek Brown had left and been replaced as head inspector by his sidekick, Derek Bulmer, who came to see me one day. When I shook his hand and said, “Hello, Mr. Bulmer,” he replied, “Please call me Derek.” He was a charming man and meant it in the most friendly way, but I felt myself shudder at the thought of calling him by his first name. It would have been a bit like a pupil being on familiar terms with the headmaster—it just wasn’t right. In fact, in my opinion, it was completely wrong and the respect evaporated on that day. It dawned on me that I had spent my whole career being judged by people who had less knowledge than me, be they restaurant inspectors or food critics. Please forgive the arrogance, but can you see my point?

There were other reasons for me wanting to hang up my apron. The nonstop process of refining dishes and striving for perfection was exhausting. I didn’t want to push myself anymore. Even when you have three stars, you still have to keep raising your game. People look at you as the top chef and their expectations become greater. It’s all about taking yourself as far as you can. It can seem never-ending.

In addition to this disillusionment, my cooks were ready to leave me and become head chefs elsewhere and I didn’t like the look of many of the new chefs arriving on the scene. Young men were coming into the industry because they wanted to be famous, not because they wanted to cook. They aspired to be
celebrity
chefs rather than chefs. Forgive the pun, but there was a distinct lack of hunger out there. There wasn’t the energy or the passion. I started to ask myself whether I wanted to build up a new team? Disenchantment had set in.

Lots of famous chefs today don’t look whacked, because they don’t work. They have a healthy glow and a clear complexion. There is blood in their cheeks. They haven’t got burns on their wrists and cuts on their hands.