The Devil in the Kitchen

by Marco Pierre White

  I finally jacked in the job at the Six Bells in spring 1984 because I missed working in fine kitchens. The pub wage, while amazing, was outweighed by an overwhelming desire to cook in the best restaurants. There was also an incident with the barman at the Six Bells. We were having an argument one day when he said to me, “At least I’ve got a mother.” He saw a look of anger cross my face. Then he picked up a knife, as if to warn me off, and I tried to grab it. The blade sliced the palm of my hand and the scar is still there today. Once I had the knife, I chinned him. Motherless readers will sympathize.

  THE FINEST RESTAURANTS in London in the summer of 1984 were Chez Nico, Gavroche and La Tante Claire. I had worked in the first two, but still, I needed to acquire knowledge and experience, so thought I’d try my luck at La Tante Claire.

  It was a small restaurant in Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea, and while it had neither the magic of the Box Tree nor the grandness of Gavroche, it was run by one of the most gifted chefs of his time. French-born Pierre Koffmann, who years earlier had worked with the Roux brothers and had picked up his second Michelin star in 1980. Known as Pierre the Bear, he was a big, bearded man somewhere in his forties and he served big, hearty food such as pavé de boeuf, pig’s trotters and turbot à la grande moutarde. He also had a reputation for being hard but straight—no bullshit—and it was said that he employed only French chefs.

  English and proud of it, I turned up and knocked on the door, just as I had done six years earlier at the Hotel St. George and then later at Le Gavroche. I told Pierre that I had worked at the Box Tree, but it didn’t matter—there was no room at the inn, so to speak. “I’m sorry,” said Pierre. “I have no vacancies, simple as that.” Then he added, “Why don’t you go and ask at Le Gavroche? They might have something going.”

  It sounds silly now, but I didn’t want to tell him I had already worked at Gavroche. Perhaps I was just reluctant to get into that conversation, because when I thought of Gavroche, the first image that came into my mind was of a soup ladle pecking my nose, and Pierre had better things to do than stand there and listen to that story. “But it’s here that I want to work,” I insisted. “Not at Gavroche. I really want to work here at Tante Claire.”

  Again he came back with, “But I haven’t got any vacancies.”

  I had no choice. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” I said, “I’ll work for nothing.” Pierre wasn’t going to turn down a freebie and he swiftly ushered me into the kitchen so I could start my new job, or rather, “pastime,” because for the first month of working in his small kitchen I wasn’t paid a bean.

  I think that even Pierre, who was seriously passionate about food, was slightly taken aback by my enthusiasm. I worked hard through my breaks and often felt his gaze upon me as I whipped up sauces and speedily prepared dishes, absorbing the pressure of his Michelin-starred restaurant. When he asked me to do some specialties, I produced dishes mastered at Gavroche, and that’s when the penny dropped. Clearly confused as he watched me rustle up dishes being served by Albert Roux’s team, Pierre said, “Marco, where did you learn those things?”

  I turned to my perplexed boss; it was time to come clean. “I used to work at Gavroche,” I told him and then carried on whipping and speedily preparing.

  Although I was thrilled to be working at Tante Claire, I saw many other chefs come and go. In fact, Pierre’s kitchen had staff turnover like I’ve never seen. Every week the brigade went from ten chefs on a Monday to four by Friday, and this is why: At the beginning of the week a batch of six chefs would arrive from France, dispatched by one of Pierre’s Parisian contacts. They would start off jolly, thrilled and privileged because they were working for the great Monsieur Koffmann. But they soon cracked.

  To begin with, they couldn’t take Pierre’s bollockings, his insistence on perfection. Most of the time, Pierre had a big palette knife in his right hand, and chefs who fell behind would get a whack on the arse. “Is he always like this?” the French lads would whisper to me. Their lives were made even more wretched by the claustrophobic conditions. The kitchen was cramped and our work surface was a big table in the middle. Like sardines in a tin, we had to fight for space. As the week went on, they would drop out. By Tuesday, we might be one man down, then another would fail to show up on Wednesday; the remaining Frenchmen would invariably break on Thursday. Come the following Monday morning a new batch of chefs would arrive from France, like troops going over the top.

  Then came Pierre’s day of reckoning: his new recruits failed to make the Channel crossing, I imagine, so he made me an official member of staff. The pay was pitiful and I was glad of my savings from the Six Bells. French recruits aside, there were now four regulars working at that table in the kitchen: Pierre and his assistant, Bruno, and then the English contingent, i.e., me and the kitchen porter, Big Barry, whom Pierre adored.

  Pierre was a workaholic who got through the day by having three ritualistic tea breaks. Each break lasted precisely five minutes and took place at a specific time—the first was at noon; the second at six forty-five, just before evening service; and the third at the end of evening service at ten thirty. The tea was always made by Big Barry, who, as a reward for serving it, was allowed a cuppa himself. No one else in that kitchen was entitled a tea break. It was a rule that distinguished the boss from his minions.

  However, one morning just before midday, I heard the kettle go on and saw Barry reaching for the tea bags when Pierre shocked me by asking, “Would you like a cup of tea?” It is probably the most common question asked in tea-loving Britain but there, in Koffmann’s kitchen, it was a question I had never heard. Positively flattered, I joined Pierre and Barry for a noon cuppa and then, at six forty-five, my self-esteem was boosted once more when Pierre asked those special words, “Would you like a cup of tea, Marco?” Again, at ten thirty, I was handed a steaming mug of Tetley. I had made it into the inner circle. Tante Claire’s elite club had just increased its membership by a third. The duo had become a trio.

  Pierre had finally recognized my talents and devotion to the job, and what’s more, his lovely wife, Annie—who ran the show in the front of house—took a shining to me. I came to realize that if Annie liked you, then her husband would think twice about getting rid of you. However, it was not as easy to endear myself to the other members of the French staff who worked front of house. Traditionally, Pierre’s wife had looked after the restaurant, but when I was there she had just had a baby, and so she only came in for a couple of hours each day. This meant the maître d’ was running the show. He looked a bit like Dracula and I don’t recall him being very friendly to me. I convinced myself that he saw me as the English boy, the one he and the waiters didn’t like.

  Every day there was a staff lunch before service and everyone would eat the meal in the restaurant, but because I always worked through my breaks, sweeping the backyard or preparing some scallops, I had never gone for lunch. One day, however, Pierre said, “Leave your work, Marco, and come through for some lunch.” I couldn’t say no to the boss, so I helped myself to some food from the kitchen and went through to the restaurant to join the rest of the team. The chefs and waiters were all sitting together at a large table but there was no room for me and I was reluctant to ask someone to move up. I started to walk back through to the kitchen—I would have my lunch in there—when I noticed that a smaller table had been laid. One little table with one chair, one napkin, one knife and one fork. It had been laid for me, but there was no way I was going to sit there alone. I’m not having that, I thought, I’m not going to be treated like an idiot. Pierre spotted the problem. “Everyone move up,” he yelled at the staff. “Marco, come and sit next to me.” It was the only time I had been in Tante Claire’s dining room and it would be a few more years before I could walk in there again, as a paying customer.

  After service Pierre would sometimes offer to give me a lift somewhere and I’d ask him to drop me in the King’s Road. I might go to the Up All Night, where you could, surprisingly, sit up
all night drinking coffee. I met girls and they seemed to find me amusing, but relationships rarely progressed further. My success rate at pulling wasn’t great because I didn’t have a huge amount of courage when it came to making the first move. I was in the Up All Night with Eddie Davenport, the young clubbing entrepreneur, when he introduced me to a posh girl whom I shall call Suzie. She was a beautiful girl, but for weeks nothing happened between us. Sometimes I would stay at Suzie’s flat in Chelsea, sleeping on the floor while she was in her bed. Then one night she just came and cuddled up with me and after that we started going out with each other.

  I was in the kitchen one lunchtime when Pierre the Bear said, “Your old boss Albert is here.” I glanced around, expecting to see my former mentor clutching a soup ladle. “No, he’s in the restaurant,” said Pierre. “He’s come for a meal. You can make it for him.” Albert ordered the Gelée de Lapin aux Champignons Sauvages, which, I must say, I went to a lot of trouble to make. I took care to ensure it was pretty and arty, then I placed the dish on the passe for Pierre’s approval, but he didn’t compliment me on the presentation. Instead, he raised a hand above the plate and brought it crashing down onto the food. Then, as if he were playing a piano concerto with one hand tied behind his back, he used his chunky fingers to mess up the dish. Rabbit terrine and mushrooms that had once looked glorious became a pile of roughed-up rubbish. Without saying a single word, Pierre had told me precisely what he thought of Albert Roux.

  TEN

  Raymond Blanc: The Oxford Don

  ALBERT ROUX AND Pierre Koffmann may have had little time for one another, but they would have both agreed on one thing: discipline was the way to run a kitchen. The prospect of receiving a loud bollocking from either chef forced me to discipline myself: arrive on time, keep surfaces tidy, absorb the pressure and cook well. But there is a major flaw in severe discipline. It suppresses flair, imagination and talent. At Gavroche, remember, Albert was the one who came up with the menus and his brigade of Roux robots didn’t dare alter the recipes.

  “Do this” was the command.

  “Yes, Chef ” was the response.

  I had never really paused to question the screaming and shouting. It seemed natural to me and I had come to accept it. “Must be prepared to take bollockings” was part of the job description. But when I was twenty-three years old, after I had done time with Roux and Koffmann, I found myself working for a chef who was soft and inquisitive. He was a man who actually asked for my opinions and who wanted to know about my passion for food. In fact, Raymond Blanc was so enthusiastic and encouraging that I discovered a sense of freedom, and that is when my confidence started to grow. It seemed as if I had done painting by numbers and now I was being given a blank (or perhaps Blanc) canvas.

  It was Nico Ladenis who, in the winter of 1984, told me about a job going at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, Raymond’s country house hotel in Great Milton, some eight miles from Oxford. Nico had called to say that one of Raymond’s chefs, Nigel Marriage, had handed in his notice, thereby creating a vacancy. Although Le Manoir had been open only for about six months, it was doing very well and was destined to win awards and become a huge success. In fact, the hotel’s restaurant already had two Michelin stars to its name, as Raymond had been allowed to transfer them from his restaurant Les Quat’Saisons in Oxford.

  “You’ve got to ring Raymond,” insisted Nico. I was working for Pierre but I made the call and arranged an interview date.

  My former employer Alan Bennett, by now a good friend, offered to drive me to the interview. We arrived at Le Manoir, originally Great Milton’s manor house, and my first impression of Raymond was, “Christ, he’s small.” The look on his face said he was thinking, “Wow, he’s big.” I did not get the job there and then. Raymond asked me to fix a date when I could do a two-day trial period in his kitchen.

  Although the interview is a blur, I have a vivid, treasured memory of the meal that followed our chat. My chauffeur Alan had been kicking his heels for about an hour while I was being grilled, so to speak, and he had developed an appetite. When I said I was ready to leave, Alan declared that he had absolutely no intention of driving home until he had lunched in the restaurant. He invited me to be his guest and I accepted. It was probably the finest meal I had ever eaten and certainly the most expensive. The bill for the pair of us came to £134 (and I wasn’t even a drinker in those days). I can see each dish now as if it were on the table in front of me. I started with Terrine of Foie Gras with Leeks, Truffle and Wild Mushrooms; then I had Salad of Offal, which was made up of calf’s sweetbreads and calf’s brains; as a main course I had Pigeon en Croûte de Sel with a Sauce Périgueux (a Madeira-based sauce with veal jus and chopped truffles); and I ended the feast with a fantastic Soufflé de Pommes.

  It wasn’t necessarily the ingredients that made the meal so magnificent. As I moved from one course to another, I studied each plate, and then it eventually dawned on me that these were the sort of dishes the best chefs in France were serving. Raymond was clearly more in touch with the development of cuisine in Paris than either Albert or Pierre. He was doing something new and exciting.

  Magazines and books had kept me up to date with how the great chefs in Paris were refining the classical dishes, so while Albert was giving his customers classical cuisine—often masculine, hearty dishes like Daube de Boeuf (braised cheeks of beef in a robust sauce)— Raymond’s food was more feminine. The foundations of his food were classically French, but the concept was lighter. There were no full-bodied sauces. Raymond knew that Mother Nature was the real artist.

  * * *

  To illustrate the point, let’s compare the veal dishes served by Messrs. Roux and Blanc:

  At Gavroche we did Veau à l’Ananas, which was 140 grams of veal fillet cut into small medallions, put into the pan briefly and then taken out; a touch of chicken stock was put into the same pan with a bit of curry sauce and hollandaise—you had to work it so it didn’t scramble—then back in went the veal along with big batons of pineapple; it was served with toasted almonds on top and in a dish with rice on the side.

  In contrast, Le Manoir served an Assiette de Veau, which was veal fillet with the spinal cord on top of it, but on the same plate were three slices of brain and three slices of sweetbread. The visual impact was improved because on top of each slice of brain was a mixture of capers, lemon and parsley cooked in butter. And then another touch to the picture: on top of each slice of sweetbread was a mixture of flaked almonds and pine kernels, which had been ground in butter. Very light.

  Raymond not only used more ingredients than his rival Albert, he also invested more energy in the presentation. At Le Manoir six or seven pans were used for one dish, which meant that three main courses could involve twenty pans. Le Gavroche’s Veau à l’Ananas was all done in one old-fashioned flambé pan.

  * * *

  “What did you think?” asked Alan as we headed down the M40.

  “It was visual,” I said. “There was freshness and lightness but it was so visual.” What I was really saying was, “I like his style. I want that job.”

  A few weeks later I was back at Le Manoir for my trial period. On the first day I worked with Nigel Marriage, whom, fingers crossed, I would replace. I was also reunited with Stephen Yare, my old friend from Gavroche, who now worked in Raymond’s kitchen. The kitchen, incidentally, was tiny then. It was almost as if Raymond had set out to create an excellent hotel and restaurant in this old Cromwellian manor house but had given no thought to the kitchen from which to feed his guests. Its size, however, would work to my advantage. It is far better to work in a small kitchen than a large one because that way you learn more: you are always close to the action—if you’re on the garnish, you can still see what’s going on with the fish, or meat or hors d’oeuvres.

  On day two Raymond came into the kitchen and said to me, “I would like you to cook me a meat dish for lunch.” I sensed it was make-or-break time. What would I give him? Or rather, what would I need t
o give him to get the job?

  A few weeks earlier I had seen a cookery book that contained dishes by a Michelin-starred French chef called Jacques Maximum. One of the dishes was a tienne of lamb that was sliced and presented on the plate in a circular fan shape. What he had done looked as interesting as pink meat on a plate can look, yet it was clearly enough to inspire me. I thought I would cook the lamb for Raymond’s lunch, but I would try to improve on Maximum’s idea.

  I pan fried the fillet of lamb and cut it into rondelles, just as Maximum had done, arranging it so that in the center of the plate there was a single circular piece of lamb, with the other pieces fanning out around it. On the outside of the fan I created another circle: a tiny turned potato sat next to a stuffed courgette, which was next to an aubergine, then another potato, and so on, until the circle was complete. I put tomato fondant on the aubergine and maybe on the courgette.

  Then I added a couple of black olives to the dish. The plate was now the round border of a symmetrical picture of Provençal-style ingredients. I suppose it was circles within circles. Over the lamb I poured the roasting juices, juices that had been enhanced with rosemary at the end of the cooking to retain the freshness, and then I split the juices with a dash of olive oil.

  The plate went out to the restaurant, where Raymond was sitting. It came back clean, closely followed by the man who had eaten from it. “Delicious,” said Raymond, who looked slightly shocked; I think because he had expected me to do a Gavroche-style dish. I was pleased, obviously, that he didn’t mention Jacques Maximum and assumed that he thought the whole thing had come out of my head.