The Independent

March 23, 1991

 

Fist in the face ofthe 'wunderkind';

 

Marco Pierre White'sheart almost packed up at the age of 28. Emily Green finds out how the scarehas affected the man and his restaurant

 

THERE are fewpleasures like Schadenfreude, that wicked delight in the misfortune of others -especially handsome, famous, successful others. So what a delicious rush ofpleasure raced through the food world when it leaked out last summer that MarcoPierre White, Britain's brightest young chef, had had a heart attack at the ageof 28. Better yet, hot on its heels came the news that his cooking style wasfluctuating madly. Bye-bye Harveys, that renegade little restaurant luringsmart society to deepest south London.

 

Too bad, then, that itis not strictly true. Harveys is booming while the dining-rooms of its swankcompetition have been drained by the recession. And the cooking has never beenbetter. The nerve of it. All the more reason that maligning the boy Albert Rouxfondly calls the ''little genius'' has become something of an industryobsession.

 

However, go to theYorkshireman himself and you will find there was ''an illness'', a fist-in-the-face warning bound for any chef of his intensity and calibre. Last summerat the age of 28, half a year after he swept to his second Michelin star (theyoungest chef ever to do so), Marco Pierre White collapsed. His blood pressurewas a staggering 210 over 180 when he was admitted to hospital - the normallevel for a young adult is 120 over 80.

 

Since ''the illness'',if not because of it, his food has subtly changed. The swot who absorbed the repertoiresof the masters is now developing his own. Dishes such as turbot with spiceswill themselves be copied by the young chefs who follow him. So looms thecrunch. Can the boy, who was so good when he was bad, combine virtuosity withhealth? Marco says he must. But he also says he ''wants out''.

 

Health concern or no,this is unlikely to receive a generous reading. Marco has babbled too manytimes about wanting to retire young and wealthy - age and amount varying withthe telling. And it does not require vicious embroidery to package the news asan insolent picture of ingratitude from the beautiful, tousled - worst yet,profane - boy from a council house in Leeds.

 

The boy who showershis staff with curses. The boy who, on the second leg of his television series,booted the Channel 4 film crew from his kitchen because the director did notknow foie gras from Spam. The boy whose book, White Heat, published lastautumn, devotes more space to photographs than recipes yet has sold more than20,000 copies.

 

Sitting at ahalf-dressed table, the week before last, was not boy wonder but a man takingstock. Yes, dishes were late. Yes, he did kick customers out for clicking theirfingers at staff (something he has grown out of). Yes, he was living in a blindpanic.

 

''I bit far too muchoff,'' he says, lighting up one of the 20-odd Marlboros he smokes each day. ''Iwas out of my mind. Five months after opening, I'd lost two stone in weight. Ifyou can imagine just being punished with pressure, day in and day out, the bankscreaming at you threatening to bounce VAT cheques. And I was 26.'' Full tobursting, Harveys still lost pounds 50,000 in its first six months.

 

In 1988 he closed hisrestaurant for a pounds 300,000 refit. The result was a lightly romantic frontroom - chic without hard edges - that could take some 60 covers. The kitchengrew: there are now seven, including Marco. Still, by any standards, certainlyMichelin ones, this is puny. ''I'm not saying we're the best in the country,''says Marco, ''but we're the toughest.''

 

With this toughnessbegins the legend of Marco as monster.

 

Away from the stove hecan seem a little boy, a six-year-old, still astounded at seeing the body ofhis doting Italian mother carried from the family home and, later, wounded by hisfather's descent into alcoholism. (As a result he is, and always has been,teetotal.) There is also a strapping teenager much in evidence, one who found anew family in teeming kitchen brigades led by towering patriarchs. Then thereis the rebel who finally let rip.

 

Much is made about hisbeating the French at their own game without ever going to France, but when hecame south he was in France: Albert Roux took him on at Le Gavroche, followedby Nico Ladenis at Chez Nico, Pierre Koffmann at La Tante Claire and RaymondBlanc at Manoir aux Quat' Saisons. Today he can rattle along inYorkshire-accented kitchen French thirteen to the dozen.

 

Watching his kitchenrev madly at full speed, one can understand the temptation to exploit the imageof maniacal Marco. The boys get machine- gun fire orders, bollockings,cajolery: whatever works. But when Marco rages, he does so like thunder,without malice. And he gets results.

 

Contrary to rumour,the boys, at least the boys who hack it, are not quivering wrecks. Most arescarcely in their twenties: Richard and Jean-Pierre (''Elvis'') on meat; Kevinand Lee on veg and larder; Mateus washing up; Roger and Didier (''Perigord'')on pastry.

 

The main kitchen is acramped triangle blazing with the heat of a 14-burner stove pumping flamethrough six open rings and beneath two solid tops. Each boy drains severallarge bottles of Hildon mineral water during service; sweat runs down theirfaces, their jackets and leggings soak through.

 

Saturday 9 March is arecord night for Harveys: 63 covers; 189 dishes, 252 including amuse-gueules.By 9pm, orders are rolling in. Marco's face is swollen with heat as he booms,''Kevin, do three beef on the main pass with Jean- Pierre! Then me and Richardwill do one pigeon, one trotter and one lamb, then come help when we're in theshit!'' They did not come help. Marco outstripped them by 30 seconds, thenbailed them out.

 

Waiters navigatethrough this fine- tuned mayhem with perilous little margin: an 18-inch gapbetween the pass and the stove or, on the other side, an eight-inch gap betweenthe dishwasher and pass. They have 10 seconds, and a send-off of ''Allez, fuckoff!'', in which to compose their glistening pink faces, to present a pictureof calm. Michelin does not dole out two stars to restaurants with rockyservice. It does, after 20 or so visits in a year before promotion, give themto the sort of place Harveys has settled into.

 

Its menu includes theclassics Marco picked up in the big houses. ''You can't reinvent the wheel,''he says. ''The best you can do is put your personal stamp on something. Once ina blue moon you'll trip on something absolutely original, and good for you. Butpeople who claim endless original dishes are having you on.''

 

He has one greatsignature dish: tagliatelle of oysters. It is simplicity on a shell: a web oftender tagliatelle laced with veloute of champagne topped with a lightlypoached oyster and a squid of black caviar. Others are bound to follow. Marco,the grown-up as opposed to 'wunderkind', has earned the time to experimentrather than simply churn out classics.

 

New dishes are tried,refined, juggled, then join the menu or are jettisoned. New on the menu isescabeshe of red mullet. Thin discs of carrot are sweated with onions andgarlic, then deglazed with vinegar. The mixture is reduced, then water, oliveoil, bouquet garni, coriander seeds, fresh coriander, saffron and cayennepepper are added. The mixture is briefly cooked. It is then poured over sealedred mullet and set to marinate. Tastes hit in a series of perfectly rolledpunches: sour notes of vinegar and pungent fish, sweetness from onions andcarrots, smoky strains from the saffron and coriander.

 

Turbot with spices hasalso been going through trials. Midweek it was fillets of turbot, packed with aspice coating of freshly roasted and crushed coriander, cumin and fennel seedsand white pepper, then pan-fried and served in a vivid crimson red wine saucewith star anise. Few cooks have the guts or brains to serve fish with red wine.Here the flavours thrive. But Marco wanted more. By Friday the spice mixtureincorporated nutmeg.

 

Few, Marco fears,would order pig's head, so he lists it on the menu as ''assiette of pork withspices''. The pig's least popular and best head cuts are sweetly tender after aslow braise in a silky liquor flavoured with ginger and honey. Simple butsophisticated.

 

Nobody sauces better.He reduces and strains stocks quickly, comparing the rationale to that ofmaking coffee: stew it too long and the flavour is thick, singed, dark. Few ofthe sauces take butter: the taste is too heavy. During service, a good bit ofkitchen fury revolves around saucing: stirring, tasting, seasoning, stirring,tasting. Before a customer tastes his or her sauce, Marco will have tried itfirst.

 

Garnishes anddressings are ingenious: essential components rather than gilding. The crispyshreds gracing the saddle of rabbit are the belly, julienned, then fried ingoose fat. A cool, fresh terrine of leeks and langoustine is circled withjulienned haricot verts and dressed with Marco's ''water vinaigrette'' - theheaviness of the olive oil cut with water. This penchant for lightness makesthe food not just edible, but digestible.

 

Thoughtful cookingspares appetite for the puddings, constructions so proud and sure they do notneed finishes. Chocolate souffles are five inches across and just as high,served hot and quivering with a boat of chocolate sauce. Lemon tarts areluxuriously creamy, cut through with a deep citric bite. And a tart Tatin,currently made with pears, is as earthy and fulsome as a pud could get:shimmering fruit, singed crust, deeply caramelised at the bottom.

 

For some guides,however, this is not enough. Repelled, it would seem, by the media circussurrounding Marco, The Good Food Guide, under its somewhat ascetic editor TomJaine, has been grudging with credit. The 1991 entry is almost two years out ofdate, peppered with swipes, many - such as the charge that the menu seldomchanges - inaccurate. According to both Marco and Jaine, when Jaine did visitHarveys almost two years ago, he did so with a companion who ordered a well-done steak which the house delivered without demur. Jaine sees nothing unusualin this, but Marco reads it as a deliberate affront from a professional eater and,since then, has not filled in any of the guide's questionnaires.

 

Be it indignation orsheer exhibitionism, Marco does not always translate smoothly outside thekitchen. When he is good he is charm itself, penning inscriptions in booksproferred by customers, greeting early arrivals warmly, rising from his chairlike a shot when a woman leaves or joins the table. He is also a skilled mimicand inspired raconteur.

 

Yet he can be baldlycheeky, ''What cat is your pussy?'' he asks a brassy blonde wearing tight,leopardskin-patterned trousers and a bright grin, who a friend has escortedinto the kitchen to meet him. Sometimes he gets away with it, sometimes not.

 

He has retreats: thecompany of his girlfriend Nicky, a lovely young woman who is tender but has thecharacter to slap him down, the wide-eyed adoration of his 18- month-olddaughter, and fishing for pike. Mostly, however, he still seeks the comfort oforchestrated panic over the stove.

 

On return fromhospital, he closed the restaurant two days a week. That helped. But he stillsuffers panic attacks and hyperventilation in the middle of the night. Againthe haunting message: his craft will kill him.

 

His response thus faris tough titty. He will be damned if he will emulate older, corpulent colleaguesin monogrammed whites and souffle hats who tend their kitchens from the pass,or even a phone call away. Which means that you probably will not see MarcoPierre White going through contortions for a third Michelin star.

 

He reckons he can lastat the stove another year or two at the most. If he backs off throttlinghimself, he says it will be in order to take his daughter to Le Gavroche whenshe is three, and to chase off her boyfriends when she is 16.

 

But what about thefuture? He hints at something simpler, bigger and jazzier in the works. As aslow grin crosses his Italianate features, all he will promise for sure is''something wonderful''.

 

Copyright 1991Newspaper Publishing PLC