Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #144160 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-27
• Released on: 2008-05-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

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).
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Enfant terrible of the kitchen, White earned three Michelin stars leading the restaurant at London's Hyde Park Hotel, the very first British chef so lauded. Yorkshire-born into a sad childhood dominated by the early loss of his mother, the teenage White found his vocation working in a local hotel's kitchen. In uncensored prose, White portrays the arc of his career as it passed from this provincial dining room up to the pinnacle of culinary accomplishment at London's legendary Le Gavroche. Utterly focused on learning his craft, White absorbed the examples of master French chefs. Beyond White's personal triumph, his memoir documents the rapid evolution of British taste in the 1970s and 1980s, when growing affluence and sophistication among the British public encouraged restaurants to dump stodgy British cooking and welcome French-disciplined young chefs who could cook at least as well as their neighbors across the Channel. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Interesting story told in uninteresting fashion
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.

Excellent
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.

The Man That Walked Away
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.