“I think self-discovery is the greatest achievement in life, because once you discover yourself and accept what you are, then you can fulfil your true potential and be happy.”
― Marco Pierre White
“Cooking is a philosophy; it’s not a recipe.”
― Marco Pierre White
“When you roast a chicken perfectly, there’s nothing more delicious.”
― Marco Pierre White
“Self-control is true power.”
― Marco Pierre White
“Once you accept and understand yourself, you do things for the right reasons, not the wrong ones, rather than being fuelled by your insecurities.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I think Singapore is one of the great cities of the world.”
― Marco Pierre White
“One day, a chef moaned that he was too hot, so I took a carving knife in one hand, held his jacket with the other, and slashed it. Then I slashed his trousers. Both garments were still on his body at the time.”
― Marco Pierre White
“A chef’s palate is born out of his childhood, and one thing all chefs have in common is a mother who can cook.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I think it’s really important for every young person to work in a kitchen because you learn a life skill.”
― Marco Pierre White
“Oh, I love ladies in hats! One rule of restaurants: never take a hat from a lady; wait for her to offer you the hat because she might not want to take it off – she might not have had time to do her hair properly.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I came from a hard, working-class world which, since my mother’s death, had been dominated by men. I hadn’t been encouraged to talk about the burden of grief, and because I was severely underdeveloped when it came to sharing my emotions, I mustn’t have been the most communicative husband.”
― Marco Pierre White
“Food should be simple; it shouldn’t be complicated, even down to making Knorr gravy: a Knorr stock cube and water, bit of parsley at the end, little bit of olive oil. It’s about making the food deliciously tasty.”
― Marco Pierre White
“A cookery book should be there for inspiration. Recipes should be a guideline, and they shouldn’t be cast in stone.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I came from the most humble side of society, and I know what it’s like to be poor, really poor, and I was brought up in the ’60s and ’70s very poor, and I’m very happy flying the flag for the working man.”
― Marco Pierre White
“The food wasn’t very good in the first kitchen I ever worked in. But it was very busy, so I learnt to be fast, absorb pressure, use a knife, and say, ‘Yes, chef.’”
― Marco Pierre White
“If I did one thing, I made cooking rock n’ roll: I made it sexy. I made young kids from rich backgrounds want to come into my world.”
― Marco Pierre White
“All great chefs have two things in common. First, they respect nature as the true artist, and they are just cooks. Second, everything that they do is an extension of them as a person.”
― Marco Pierre White
“A lot of people say I look like a rock star or a designer punk. But I swear it’s the job that has carved my face. It’s the hours, the stress, and the pressure. It’s not me trying to look like this.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I’m happiest walking through fields, on beaches, and over riverbanks. Nature is my surrogate mother.”
― Marco Pierre White
“For me, food is about generosity, and this should reflect on the plate as well.”
― Marco Pierre White
“Life is an emotional rollercoaster. It really is.”
― Marco Pierre White
“Females make better cooks than men. Females have a better palate. They have a better sense of smell. They never take shortcuts; this is why they’re very good in kitchens. The weakness in what they do is they are not as physically strong as men, so they’re never really given the opportunity.”
― Marco Pierre White
“Good people are always forgiving. They close an eye to one’s failings.”
― Marco Pierre White
“My favourite dinner is a cup of tea and a ham sandwich with English mustard.”
― Marco Pierre White
“You can’t be a chef and appear on television all the time. It’s impossible. At least when I earned my stars, I was always behind my stove.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I think what you got to do is to create an environment which people wish to sit in. You have to create a menu which is interesting to people. You have to create food which is delicious and affordable. I think that’s what’s important.”
― Marco Pierre White
“My children are, without question, the most wonderful thing. I’ve learnt more about myself through my children than any other experience in my life.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I’m naturally an introvert.”
― Marco Pierre White
“If you really want to know what motivated me as a young man, it was a fear of death.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I leave my emotions at home.”
― Marco Pierre White
“Whether dealing with children or chefs, they are all giant babies in need of nurturing.”
― Marco Pierre White
“Can you imagine, I lost my mother at age six? My childhood ended then.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I am a believer that if you bring children into this world, then you have a responsibility to do your best and support and guide them until the day you die.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I was brought up to respect my father and not to love him.”
― Marco Pierre White
“When you work for someone, you never realise how much you are learning. It is only when you leave and you reflect back on life.”
― Marco Pierre White
“Perhaps I created the monster Ramsay, who ended up as a TV personality screaming at celebrities on ‘Hell’s Kitchen,’ doing to them what I had done to him.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I love the countryside, which is where I live and feel most comfortable, and hate being surrounded by herds of people.”
― Marco Pierre White
“People still think I led a rock and roll lifestyle. I was in my kitchen 100 hours a week; I didn’t have time to do that.”
― Marco Pierre White
“Harveys opened against the backdrop of Thatcher’s greed culture.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I love working. I love doing things. I don’t like sitting.”
― Marco Pierre White
“Like most fathers, I would do anything for my children, and I’ve worked very hard at trying to be a good father. I want to give them education, security, everything I never had.”
― Marco Pierre White
“Restaurants should be democratic; you shouldn’t be made to feel privileged for getting a table or being lectured by the waiter.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I never met a man who worked harder than me.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I never had a drink at all till I was 38. I’m just not a drinker. I go days without drinking.”
― Marco Pierre White
“Rudeness is not having fun, and if it is, it’s at the expense of another person.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I think, in life, the more you force things, they break. You just let things happen.”
― Marco Pierre White
“The only time I am seen in public is when I go to work. When I go home to England, I never leave my home.”
― Marco Pierre White
“In 1990 at Harveys, when I was 28 years old, I became the youngest chef to win two Michelin stars. It was a huge achievement.”
― Marco Pierre White
“The reason I do television is because we all have to work and earn a living, as I have four children. It’s also a platform for me to share my knowledge and inspire the young.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I don’t need Michelin, and they don’t need me.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I love gardens!”
― Marco Pierre White
“Remember, restaurateurs are only shopkeepers; that’s all we are. It’s no different from the supermarket down the road.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I don’t like London. I’m not happy here. I don’t even own a flat here.”
― Marco Pierre White
“You’ll never see me at award ceremonies.”
― Marco Pierre White
“The day I stopped fearing my father was the day I could enjoy him.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I can’t work in a domestic kitchen; it’s just too confined. There’s no freedom, and there’s no buzz.”
― Marco Pierre White
“Nine out of 10 English chefs have their names on their chests. Who do they think they are? They’re dreamers. They’re jokes.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I like a nice cross section of society in my restaurants – the stars, the toffs, the working guy.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I wouldn’t want to be in one room, 20 hours a day, 52 weeks a year, with four white walls and a stove. I think it stunts your growth as a human being.”
― Marco Pierre White
“My pet hate, with customers, is those that think it’s all about wallets.”
― Marco Pierre White
“Generally, I respect critics; they have their job to do.”
― Marco Pierre White
“My twenties were the worst period of my life.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I was racially discriminated against for years as a child in Leeds because I was an Italian.”
― Marco Pierre White
“My mother’s death was the defining moment of my life.”
― Marco Pierre White
“Dad was diagnosed with lung cancer when I was a lad. From then on, he lived in fear that death was just around the corner, and he set about programming me to work hard and bring in some cash.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I discovered that the world of the finest restaurants was something akin to the world of the Mafia.”
― Marco Pierre White
“Oliver Reed was a great man who did things his own way. He used to come into Harveys, my restaurant in Wandsworth, and sit on the floor to have a drink before going to the table.”
― Marco Pierre White
“As far as I am concerned, ambition is the most dangerous occupation in the world. I have never been ambitious, or if I have, it’s only been by default.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I am not the sort of person who gives up.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I’m a great fan of farmed products, as long as it’s done properly, because it allows people to be able to afford them. If it wasn’t for farmed products, a lot of people wouldn’t eat so well.”
― Marco Pierre White
“The newspapers had described me as the Jagger of the Aga. It wasn’t hard living up to the reputation.”
― Marco Pierre White
“’Wall Street’ was the big movie of 1987, the year in which Harveys opened. It was a film about greed and self-indulgence, about hunger for success, and Michael Douglas’s line, ‘breakfast is for wimps,’ became a mantra for anyone who wanted to get to the top.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I take so much from my life. I have my shooting and my fishing. I have my working life. I have my relationship with my children.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I like my mind being stimulated. I like discovering new concepts.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I love the institution of marriage.”
― Marco Pierre White
“We all make mistakes. God knows I’ve made more than anyone else I know.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I met my first wife at the fishmonger’s in the summer of 1987, some six months after opening Harveys.”
― Marco Pierre White
“My tortured life – with its extremes and conflicts – might have been difficult for me to deal with, but the press couldn’t get enough of it. I was in the papers every day, ‘the enfant terrible of the culinary world.’”
― Marco Pierre White
“My cooking attracted celebrities. I met Sylvester Stallone. He squeezed my bicep and said: ‘I don’t usually eat your kind of food, but for you, I ate it.’ I haven’t got a clue what he’d eaten but he asked me to cook for his wedding feast when he married Jennifer Flavin at Blenheim Palace.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I was brought up on a council estate. I know what it’s like to be poor.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I don’t believe I’ve ever truly been in love because I don’t believe that I’ve known myself well enough in the past to allow someone to love me.”
― Marco Pierre White
“If I think back to the eighties, my methods weren’t conventional, but they got results.”
― Marco Pierre White
“There’s something rather comforting about putting on an apron.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I was brought up a working-class Tory. I believe, to be a true socialist, you have to be a capitalist first. In my heart, I’m a socialist; in my mind, I’m a capitalist.”
― Marco Pierre White
“’Kitchen Wars’ makes ‘MasterChef’ look like a walk in the park!”
― Marco Pierre White
“When I look at old pictures, I see my son Luciano, not me. Luciano looks identical. That’s what’s extraordinary, the power of a gene pool.”
― Marco Pierre White
“Anybody who thinks they’re the perfect parent is a fool.”
― Marco Pierre White
“English wine is nonsense. They are over-priced and not very good.”
― Marco Pierre White
“The French make the best wine.”
― Marco Pierre White
“Just because something is English does not necessarily mean it is good. We make the best cheddar; we make great pasties. But we can’t make very good brie or baguettes – and the French can’t make pork pies.”
― Marco Pierre White
“Buy locally where possible, but if you can’t get the very best locally, don’t buy locally. Buy it from where it is best.”
― Marco Pierre White
“My favourite dessert is tarte Tatin.”
― Marco Pierre White
“My grandfather, father, and uncle were chefs, and my other uncle was a butcher.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I just can’t stand Tony Blair.”
― Marco Pierre White
“Cuisine Nouvelle was just a concept, and one which, crucially, the English managed to get wrong. I mean, if you run a restaurant, you’ve got to feed people, not make pretty little pictures on plates to make up for your lack of ability.”
― Marco Pierre White
“I’m the Christopher Biggins of reality TV.”
― Marco Pierre White
“The pressure of TV can force people to do odd things.”
― Marco Pierre White
“You cannot criticize a man for going to work. You really cannot.”
― Marco Pierre White
“People are bored of these 12-course gastronomic menus. They want affordable glamour.”
― Marco Pierre White
“My mind might be conservative, but at heart, I was always a socialist.”
― Marco Pierre White
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