Marco Pierre White and the battle for affordable quality cuisine: you can sell great food at reasonable prices, the great chef declared to the Financial Times 30 years ago. Today that interview still provides a current key to understanding the restaurant industry.
The chef
Known as the enfant prodige, the rock star chef; known for being unscrupulous and irreverent, for bringing British cuisine to international attention, and for training some of the most distinguished chefs from across the Channel, Marco Pierre White has never stopped speaking his mind. Despite the fact that it was 1999 when, after 22 years of total dedication to cooking, he announced his retirement from the front line to devote himself to running several restaurants-as well as participating in TV programs and writing about food-the great chef, even today, takes a clear stance-always forward-thinking and ahead of his time-on how the restaurant world should work. Obvious has always been his “reasonable obsession” with value for money, as well as with the prevalence of substance over aesthetics in any kind of culinary proposal.
Leaving Leeds at just 16 years old, after leaving high school to train in some of the UK's most prestigious starred kitchens-where he managed to develop his innate passion for gastronomy - Marco Pierre White received his first star at just 24 years old in 1987 with the Harveys, his second the following year, and his third, at 33, thanks to the opening of the Marco Pierre White inside the Hyde Park Hotel: a star that established him as the first and youngest British chef to receive the highest accolade from the Red. It is safe to say that the chef, known for his irreverence and cheekiness, has always been clear about the dynamics of fine dining (and non-fine dining) kitchens. “Am I bad? Some people say that. Some people criticize me and my work, but who are these people? You don't get two Michelin stars if you are just a bad one. There's more to it than that,” he declared to the Financial Time back in 1994 in unsuspected times (the interview has now been republished 30 years later, precisely to highlight its relevance in tone and content).
“Here's an example. One of the things I believe in, in my restaurants, is value for money: affordable food, but at the level of Michelin standards. At The Canteen all appetizers cost £6.50 and all main courses £10.50. People can afford that. That's why The Canteen earns over 70,000 pounds a week. I want to achieve this kind of value for money at The Restaurant (then three Michelin stars, ed.). It is too easy to rob customers. Unfortunately, this happens a lot. The way I will earn my money is in the long run. The last thing I will do is jeopardize what I already have." Now, with the various steakhouses, restaurants already in business and those he is about to open, the desire to make quality cuisine affordable to most is even more alive and concrete. Pierre White has never hidden behind formalisms and conventions; he has always been an open book, not hesitating to expound his point of view, resulting, however, at times, indecipherable to most because of the genius within him.
That genius, perseverance and his dream of becoming a chef took him from a small village in West Yorkshire to become one of the world's leading exponents of gastronomy. Perhaps it is the very spirit of that young boy, who arrived in London with £7.36 in his wallet, a box of books and a bag of clothes, that makes Pierre White still promote more casual concepts today , which become a true community landmark where you can enjoy great food in a relaxed and convivial atmosphere. “I think every restaurant of mine has to be democratic, this is very important to me,” he indeed said a few months ago referring to one of his latest projects.
