"Achieving enormous success makes you lonely. You lose yourself a lot, you get depressed. And what you find is that everyone becomes jealous of you."
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The enfant terrible of haute cuisine, he was the youngest chef in history to win three Michelin stars, but at the same time he has never ceased to make people talk about him. The latest statement? About the potential of the microwave to make textbook dishes. After all, Marco Pierre White, once referred to as the “rock star” of gastronomy and the first true “celebrity chef,” even turned down the 3 macarons at the height of his success. A path, his, however, destined to intertwine with that of great colleagues such as his friend Anthony Bourdain, who praised him for having “changed fin dining forever.” Genius and unruliness well summed up by statements reported today by the online magazine Esquire Any examples? “Success is born of arrogance, but greatness is the child of humility,” says the top chef, condensing into a few words a philosophy of life forged both in and out of the kitchen. Life in the stove, for him, is not a set of recipes, but a true philosophy. “Except for pastry, “ he points out, ”which is pure chemistry instead.” Once the basics are understood, everything becomes easier.
It is impossible to talk about White without evoking the iconic black-and-white photo taken by Bob Carlos Clark, the one showing him with long hair and a cigarette in his fingers, immortalized in White Heat. “That image changed the way the public saw cooks, “ he says. “Cooks were still considered men in high hats, and instead they were faced with a ‘lunatic’ who worked a hundred hours a week.” Rebellion has always been in White's DNA. When he let cameras into his kitchen, they provoked him. “I was young and fell for it, but it was the best thing that could have happened to me. I haven't allowed them in since." The real turning point, however, came at age 32. A voice inside him asked, “Marco, who is your mother?” In going through each memory, he realized not so much who she was, but who he was. This revelation transformed his approach to cooking. “It all became simple, ‘ he recounts, ’and shortly thereafter I won three Michelin stars.”
However, for White, maintaining them proved tedious. “Winning three stars is exciting; defending them is rather monotonous. That's why so many three-star chefs never stay in their kitchens." His decision to return the stars was a rebellion against what he considered a travesty. “To be judged by people with less expertise than me? Why should I value that judgment? To keep them would have been to live a lie." Then the dark side of success: "Achieving enormous notoriety makes you lonely. You lose yourself a lot, you get depressed. And what you find is that everyone becomes jealous of you." Also, “Many people measure success in terms of wealth. How shallow it is." For him, beauty is in the act of letting go, in looking at things from a distance that restores their true value. And if you think White is a food purist, you will be surprised to hear him defend even McDonald's. “You can't criticize, can you? Look at things for what they are, not what you wish they were. The worst flaw in my industry is snobbery."
With a lucid and often disorienting vision, Marco Pierre White reminds us that cooking, like life, is a balance between passion and awareness. And perhaps in this very dance between greatness and humility lies the secret of a man who has transformed an art into a way of being.
