Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

I have only ever read three other autobiographies and that was enough to put me off the genre for good. However I picked this one up because Marco lived on the same estate as my grandparents whom I visited regularly as a child and I thought local references and memories might be interesting. I was intending to skim read it but I was engrossed from the first page.

The loss of his mother at such a young age was by far the most traumatic thing that ever happened to him and whilst he acknowledges this and recognises how the experience, amongst other things, might have shaped him, he doesn't use it as an excuse. In fact it's interesting to see how a persons attributes and failings can be traced to parents, upbringing and early experiences.

I enjoyed his tales of escaping to the Harewood estate to go fishing and his first jobs, his days on the Kings Road with the Chelsea crowd through to his success as a Michelin starred chef. Most of all I admired his hard work, determination and passion for creating which comes through almost obsessively. Even if you have no interest in fine dining or 'cheffing' you can't help but enjoy his mischievous streak as he describes people he worked with and stories of pranks both in the kitchen and out.

Interestingly the title of this book in Britain is simply 'The Devil In The Kitchen' which I feel is a better description as the book isn't about sex or madness and the additional title just isn't needed.

This book takes no time in introducing us to the powerful story of a boy who loses his mother very young and spends much of his life racing to close the hurt this causes. If this sounds like an odd approach to a chef's life, it is nonetheless what clearly drove Marco Pierre White and his story is moving, as well as full of celebrities, ferocity and bad behaviour.

What also comes over very clearly is how passionate this man was about being the best. I get the impression that is was the desire to prove himself which, more than anything, made this person put in such dedication and drive.

It is an interesting and emotional story, one that reads well and is certainly worth reading. Recommended.

Sherlock Holmes and the Flying Zombie Death Monkeys

A wonderful story from childhood thru success and all the pitstops in between. I found myself laughing out loud at some of the stories. I just finished it last night, and am thinking of reading it over. A truly fascinating man.

This is an excellent for anyone in the food industry. It is fascinating and you are unable to put this book down once you begin.

An interesting look at Marco Pierre White's journey from a public housing project in Leeds to becoming the first of today's generation of celebrity chefs. Before Emeril, Batali, and purely made for TV products like Rachel Ray, White redefined fame for a chef, dating supermodels and being hounded by British tabloids.

The book is interesting, though not particularly well-written, and it certainly tends toward self-absorption on White's part. It is nowhere near the equal of Anthony Bourdain's work, or Bill Buford's excellent "Heat", which offers a behind-the-scenes look at the bombastic, but endearing, Mario Batali.

In today's world of professionally trained chefs (see Michael Ruhlman's excellent "The Making of a Chef"), White is a anachronism, coming up as an apprentice in progressively more prestigious kitchens. Some of the most interesting technical elements of the book share White's thoughts on the evolution of classical French cuisine, as it has become progressively lighter over time, with heavy sauces de-emphasized in favor of highlighting the principal ingredients. Sadly, these elements are sparingly interspersed amongst a steady diet of White's eruptions in the kitchen ("bollockings") and anecdotes in which he curses his patrons and throws them out of his restaurants.

While an interesting read, this is really a book for professionals, or those deeply interested in the restaurant industry. There is little to learn about cooking, and if you want a look into the world of professional cooking, the books I referred to above are all better places to start.

A touching and enduring love story between Mr. White and his temper tantrums, most of which happen to take place in a kitchen, which is as close as this book comes to being about food. Mr. White's father was mean to him as a child, and Mr. White as a supposed grown up is mean to others, told 100 times over. Insanely boring. Kitchen Confidential was infinitely better although yes, Mr. White was quite the hottie back in the day and looks great on the cover.

Marco Pierre White is both an award-winning chef and the product of a council block in Leeds. The Devil in the Kitchen demonstrates the relationship between those two facts, as Marco is driven to succeed, leveraging his blue collar work ethic and personal pride. His drive is all-consuming, with 17 and 18 hour days at the stove a common pattern. He is animated by a love of food--nature's great gift--and he operates on adrenalin, nicotine, an obsession with quality control and, for a time, the need for public recognition of his efforts.

Marco is often thought of in America as Gordon Ramsay's mentor. If so, he put the hell in hell's kitchen, though the book is less about him as a devil than about the demons that make him a great chef. The book is a tour of British gastronomy in that Marco works--in the course of his life--at many of England's great restaurants and for England's great (often non-English) chefs.

The book includes recipes of some signature dishes and sidebar tips on Marco's methods and techniques. The narrative (written with James Steen) is brisk, interesting and engaging. It is a story of obsession and accomplishment but not really about sex, pain, and madness, as the subtitle suggests. There is a little sex and a bit of pain but no madness in the clinical sense. There are also tantrums, anecdotes of the glitterati and tales of the rich, the powerful, the hungry and the rude. The world of Marco's kitchens will not be unfamiliar to readers of Tony Bourdain or fans of Gordon Ramsay's many shows. In some narratives cookery is all sweetness, light, conviviality, love and family. Here it is war, but war that is very tasty and washed down with first growth red bordeaux.

Both confirmed foodies and fans of memoir and autobiography will enjoy this book.

I used to think of MPW as sell-out. A tired old chef peddling stock cubes and trying to convince people that they were somehow superior to salt...lol. After reading this book and taking a long walk in Marco's shoes, actually staging at the acclaimed Waterside Inn myself I don't think anyone should be commenting on who or what Marco is, they haven't worked hard enough yet.