Marco Pierre White should stop writing and get back to what he does best, says pete clark |
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There is a man who is failing in his patriotic duty at the moment, and his name is Marco Pierre White. This medusa-haired, brutishly bestubbled character has walked away from the heat of the kitchen in order to oversee a restaurant empire of fluctuating fortunes and mastermind the reduction of wildlife numbers in this country by gun and rod. Such a course of action is more than a dereliction of duty: it represents an act of culinary apostasy.
Since a visit to Harveys in the late 1980s, I have been smitten with his sumptuous skills. On that occasion, it was a raviolo of lobster. At other times, it has been cod and chips in the Titanic, or corned beef hash in the Mirabelle. This man used to make food sing. Now, there is silence.
Actually, that is not quite true because having abandoned the kitchen, Marco has
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| ‘This man used to make food sing. Now, he writes. It’s a tragedy.’ |
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decided to publish his braying memories of it, and these are not edifying.
White Slave, published on August 23, lifts the lid on Marco's tempestuous times. He boasts of the bullying tactics used to cow his staff into submission, and trumpets his sexual conquests. The myth that he so successfully created around himself, when part of the thrill of dining chez Marco was the possibility that he might suddenly emerge from the kitchen wielding a meat cleaver, has now been grindingly converted to print, where it does nothing but depress the spirits.
This is a particular shame because Marco Pierre White, in his unfettered pomp, improved the quality of life in this country.
He transformed the prosaic and stuffy rituals of eating out into a theatrical experience. Marco learned from the great chefs who were his seniors, and bequeathed us a legacy of great chefs to whom he was an inspired mentor. Gordon Ramsay is but one, and how wonderful it would be if Marco donned once more the whites of his trade and did lip-smacking battle with a pupil-turned-usurper. 
FIRST
POSTED AUGUST 3, 2006
 The business of being Marco Pierre White
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