Television’s first chef

9:39am Monday 7th January 2008

TV cook Marco Pierre White talks to Steve Pratt about why he loves cakes and tearooms

CHEF and restaurateur Marco Pierre White remembers the date well - December 12, 1999 was the day he handed back his three Michelin stars. He hasn't cooked for a paying customer since then.

"I'd proved my point and did what I wanted. I was working six days a week, 18 hours a day. There's more to life than that.

I refused to live a lie and pretend to cook when I didn't."

That must be a dig at chefs whose name remains above the door but who rarely venture into the kitchen.

White is a man of his word which, as those who saw him educate the amateur celebrity cooks in the recent series of ITV1's Hell's Kitchen, can be as harsh as his behaviour.

This is the chef who chucked patrons out of his restaurants after taking offence at their comments. He once charged a customer £25 after he asked for a plate of chips, and he cut open his chef's jacket and trousers after he complained of the heat in the kitchen.

On a crisp winter's day just before Christmas, White is in mellow mood as he sits in The Black Swan in the market town of Helmsley, North Yorkshire. It suits the surroundings, the new tearoom and patisserie that he will officially open later that day.

In the new tearoom, guests and visitors to the hotel can sample exotic teas and coffees from around the world while enjoying handmade cakes and chocolates created by the hotel's chef patissier Martin Towse.

Leeds-born White knows the place through former owner Sir Rocco Forte.

"I've been invited many times but never stayed. I used to get asked to come shooting, but it was so far from London," he says.

"It's the jewel in the Yorkshire crown.

You might walk into hotels which are very modern and have all the gadgets but The Black Swan is something special and has a great history."

White professes a love of cake and tearooms.

"They're quintessentially English and there should be more of them," he says.

WHITE, who's been called the first celebrity chef, began cooking for love not fame. Both his father and his grandfather were chefs. "I left school on Friday and started work on Monday at the Hotel St George in Harrogate," he says proudly.

"When I walked into the kitchen I realised I had a natural love affair with food because of all the images around me as a child. We always ate well and never had tins. If we had beans, we never had baked beans.

"I used to help prepare vegetables. There was no sense of being trained for the family business, but I suppose my father knew he would send me down that road.

"It was a world I could excel in without having to express myself verbally. In those days it was Escoffier's world. You had acclaimed chefs, not celebrity chefs."

White holds strong views on the subject.

Boys went into the kitchen, he says, with the clear intention of learning their craft and doing their job. "They never asked how long are the hours I will work or how much will I get paid? They just said yes, chef'," he says.

"People, in my opinion the majority of people, who enter the industry as chefs now do so with the wrong intention. They enter wanting to be famous, to be celebrities on TV."

So when did he realise that he could cook? "I don't know whether I've ever thought I was good at it, but I always found it easy. It came very naturally to me and I was turned on, inspired by natural produce,"

says White.

Having become the first British chef to win three Michelin stars, he felt able to retire, having achieved his aim. But he still has the ability to cause a ruckus in the kitchen as we saw on Hell's Kitchen, in which he coached small-time celebrities in the art of cooking. Tempers became as hot as the stoves, leading to comedian Jim Davidson being asked to leave after a confrontation with Big Brother winner Brian Dowling.

"I did my job to the best of my ability with the people I was given," says White with unusual restraint. "The one thing which is satisfying is feeding all your customers and beating the system.

"When someone can't cook or has no competence in the kitchen, you can't expect too much from them. You have to accept you can't teach them how to cook in 17 days, but you can teach them to apply a strategy."

He's committed to doing another series on ITV1 in May, although he doesn't know if the format will be the same. "I don't think of it as television, it's just a job to me.

When you walk into that kitchen, you're there to do a job," he says.

He avoids the celebrity circuit. "I'm not seen socially. I don't go to awards ceremonies or parties, dinners or gatherings. I can walk through the town here and not have people recognise me. I don't show myself off, I'm discreet," says White.

He says he's a cook not a chat show host, but does he consider himself a Yorkshireman?

"I say I'm an Englishman with an Italian mother, Yorkshire born and reared," is his reply.

He's retired but there's a side of him that would like to open a tearoom "because it's without doubt the most elegant meal of the day".

Taking a woman to tea is a good way of impressing her, he suggests. "If I was to take a girl out, I would take her out to tea.

If I was a girl and someone asked me to go to afternoon tea, I'd think it was charming.

"And, look on the bright side, you might save yourself a few quid."

* For further information on The Black Swan hotel call 01439-770466 or visit www.blackswan-helmsley.co.uk

Editor's Choice