The Devil in the Kitchen: Sex, Pain, Madness and the Making of a Great Chef (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Significant Seven, May 2007: Marco Pierre White made history as the most decorated chef in the UK and still holds the honor as the youngest chef ever to win three Michelin stars. Billed as a "brooding Byron" of the kitchen, MPW brought a punk-rock sensibility to his craft, shattering centuries-old rules of fine-dining tradition (and bruising many egos in the process) in his pursuit for perfection. He remains a searing influence on a generation of chefs who survived tours-of-duty in his kitchen brigade and those inspired by White Heat, his modern-classic cookbook (and now high-priced collector's item). In his absorbing culinary memoir, The Devil in the Kitchen, MPW offers intimate insights into his storied career presenting a larger-than-life portrait of a living legend and a culinary genius. --Brad Thomas Parsons

From Publishers Weekly

[Signature]Reviewed by James OselandThe world's most celebrated chefs are divided into two opposing camps these days. In one, there are the do-gooder humanists like Alice Waters of Berkeley's Chez Panisse. In the other, there are the self-avowed holy terrors like Britain's Marco Pierre White, author of this plodding autobiography, co-written with James Steen and originally published in the U.K. in 2006 under the untoward title White Slave. An influential figure in English cooking in the 1980s and '90s, White built an empire of London restaurants that included Harveys (where he became the youngest chef—at age 28—to win two Michelin stars), Mirabelle and the Oak Room. Famous folks like Michael Caine and Prince Charles were admirers of White's smart, decadent interpretations of classic French dishes. But while White was widely lauded for his culinary skill, it was his flamboyant temper that most frequently earned him headlines. An avowed proponent of tongue lashings (White calls them "bollockings") toward kitchen staff for all manner of infractions, the chef claims that such harsh behavior is justified in the pursuit of excellent dining. "If you are not extreme then people will take short cuts because they don't fear you," White explains. What he dubbed his "theatre of cruelty" extended beyond his kitchen. During White's glory years, getting thrown out of one of his establishments by the enfant terrible himself was considered a badge of honor by some Londoners. White recounts in the book one such eviction, of a patron who had criticized his meal: "Staring at this dwarfish, patronizing man... I found myself saying, 'Why don't you just f— off?'" Scenes like this make up the lion's share of The Devil in the Kitchen; indeed, after a point, they become dirge-like in their predictability. Why, I asked myself midway through this book—right around the time that my discomfort at White's antics gave way to boredom—would readers, much less diners, want to be in the company of such a gregariously antisocial character? As is the case with virtually any autobiography, the answer is that we are seeking a window into the subject's soul, no matter how, well, unsavory that subject might be. His book, unfortunately, provides no such insights, offering readers little more than a continual, atonal concerto of scuffles with customers and insults to co-workers. Please, I wanted to say to White as I was reading, stifle all that alpha male stuff and just cook. (May)James Oseland is the editor-in-chief of Saveur magazine and the author of Cradle of Flavor: Home Cooking from the Spice Islands of Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia (Norton, 2006).
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (May 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596913614
• ISBN-13: 978-1596913615
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #131,032 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Interesting story told in uninteresting fashion, June 12, 2007

By	Moira (Detroit, Michigan) - See all my reviews

There is a fascinating story in this book, but unfortunately it never emerges. Marco White has all the elements - talent, glamour, flamboyance, brilliant chef and restauranteur, and a real flair for drama and theatrics. In telling his own story, however, he settles for a recitation of all the bad-boy behavior told with a tedious lack of insight and an unattractively smug tone. How long can you go on tossing people out of your restaurant (customers, employees and business partners alike) and your life (friends, colleagues, mentors and wives) before it occurs to you that the problem isn't other people, but you? For White, it seems that the answer is "Forever."



White's personal story is compelling - up from a working class background, raised by an emotionally distant father after his mother's early death, inspired by food and cooking to reach the pinnacle of British cuisine (stop snickering - it does exist and he did it) at a very young age and thereby gaining entry into the glitzy jet set that he both loves and is uncomfortable with. The problem is that he lists the facts ("This is how I got this job; this is where I worked under brutal conditions that would fell a lesser man and where I loved it until I hated it and was fired or quit; this was a cooking genius I deeply admired and learned enormously from until I stopped admiring and now we don't speak; and I did this all because I am driven by an unslakeable thirst to brag about what a pain-junkie I am") without conveying any of the excitement and enthusiasm that must have fueled this. Other than being self-congratulatory ad nauseum about what a tough bastard he is, White has nothing to offer a reader trying to understand how he became the culinary rock-star that he is - a phrase he cannot get enough of.



And that is a pity, because a book by a chef should at least be able to convey his knowledge of and passion for food. Three Michelin stars are not just handed out like Halloween candy, and a chef with his talent, knowledge and experience - aaah, it's just plain frustrating that the food part of this takes a distant second place to Big Bad Bullying Chef stories. Where is all the sublime food that he must have cooked? The hunt for superb ingrdients? The remarkable techniques that transformed a simple rice dish into "the best risotto he ever ate"? Missing, that's where. Foodies everywhere will be disappointed.



Oh, yeah - if you are going to list sex first in your subtitle, there should be more of it in the book other than an acknowledgment that you are shy with the birds and that you preferred cooking to sex. Especially when you are also saying that you routinely shagged customers in your office during dinner service.



One chapter of the book relates his law suit against the NY Times for publishing a mildly defamatory profile of him, where one of his successful claims was that the piece damaged his reputation among American diners who might now avoid his restaurants. Considering what he has done to himself with this book, White should return the money.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Devil's In The Culinary Details., December 17, 2008

By	G. Merritt (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Devil in the Kitchen: Sex, Pain, Madness, and the Making of a Great Chef (Paperback)

By age 33, English chef, restaurateur, and enfant terrible, Marco Pierre White had been awarded three Michelin stars, making him the first and youngest Briton to ever receive this accolade. He won his first Michelin star after opening Harveys, London (now Chez Bruce), where he was quickly awarded his second star in 1988 at age 28. He then became chef-patron of The Restaurant Marco Pierre White at the former Hyde Park Hotel (now the Mandarin Oriental), where he won his third Michelin Star. White then moved to the Oak Room at Le Meridien Piccadilly. Meanwhile, White had attracted a cult following of foodies that included Michael Caine and Prince Charles. Then after receiving both accolades and fame, White decided to give up his Michelin stars. "I was being judged by people who had less knowledge than me," he said during a 2007 interview. "So what was it truly worth? I gave Michelin inspectors too much respect, and I belittled myself. I had three options: I could be a prisoner of my world and continue to work six days a week, I could live a lie and charge high prices and not be behind the stove, or I could give my stars back, spend time with my children and re-invent myself" (Caterer and Hotelkeeper, 2007-04-25). White then announced his retirement in 1999. He has since published several books: White Heat, his memoir, White Slave: The Autobiography (titled The Devil in the Kitchen: Sex, Pain, Madness, and the Making of a Great Chef in paperback), and Wild Food from Land and Sea.

The Devil in the Kitchen chronicles White's life from his childhood in Leeds troubled by the loss of his mother, to his three marriages, to his passionate pursuit of culinary perfection as a chain-smoking, "brooding Byron" in the kitchen. White candidly reveals his harsh antics (or "theatre of cruelty," as he describes his behaviour) behind the culinary skills that earned him the reputation of being a flamboyent enfant terrible in the kitchen. He ejected customers from his restaurants regularly. With a paring knife, he once cut the jacket and trousers off a chef who complained about the kitchen heat. "If you are not extreme," he writes, "then people will take short cuts because they don't fear you." White's culinary memoir is a collection of lively tales that will appeal to foodies, fans of books like Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential), or to anyone with an interest in larger-than-life celebrity chefs. "Marco Pierre White was the original rock-star chef," Bourdain says. "The guy who all of us wanted to be. From the moment my chef pals and I got a look at his first cookbook--and at photos of the Man Himself, in all his haggard, debauched-looking, obsessively driven glory--we dreamed of nothing more than to be just like him." Recommended with enthusiasm.

G. Merritt

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Marco Hates You, September 24, 2007

By	Mr. William L. Burge IV "stlbites.com" (St. Louis, MO) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Marco Pierre White is the original rock and roll chef and the first person I'm aware of to consistently go into the dining room and tell people to shove off.

When I was on an ACF Jr. Culinary Olympic Team in the late 90s, this was not a fact we overlooked, and for it White was instantly a hero of ours. I grabbed up all his cookbooks; the best of which was the tough to find White Heat. Through it, we discovered strange foods like caul fat, that we, as young cooks, had never seen, had, or even heard of.

Needless to say, when I saw he was writing a biography, my interest was peaked.

There's a funny story in the book that sums it up for me. A Michelin 3 star chef dined at White's restaurant, and afterwards, came into the kitchen to say everything was great except the fish -- which was salty. White told the cook who prepared it to tell the chef to "F off".

White seems to tell everyone to "F" Off, and as interesting as this book was to me, a fan, I'm sad to say, overall, it is pretty poor. White has a tremendous ego, and comes off sounding like a real jerk that ruins every meaningful relationship he's ever been apart of both personally and in business.