On Food and "Drunkenness"

Marco Pierre White and the Art of Dinner

Marco Pierre White by Bob Carlos Clarke

I think for my generation, it was something like Emeril Lagasse that made being a celebrity chef a real thing again. Plenty came before him, but at the time, his flair, his tendency to add just a little more vodka or garlic than the recipe required, and his interaction with his live audience propelled the food network to a household name. Don't quote me on it — I was young, and this is just how I remember it looking back.

Either way, it was Emeril Lagasse that turned me on to cooking. Not just cooking, but reading about food and appreciating food in a more focused way. I would watch it late at night, get a little hungry myself — and perhaps make a meal in the late hours.

Since then, the Jamie Oliver’s, Batali’s, Ramsay's have all come into the limelight and have become household names. Perhaps the most successful was Gordon Ramsay himself, who owns dozens of restaurants around the world and whose fiery temper inside the kitchen is now synonymous with the word chef — it's quite entertaining, however, not as inspiring as one would hope.

Another big figure — who had television shows and plenty of restaurant ventures himself is a perhaps lesser-known figure at the moment — a chef by the name of Marco Pierre White. It was not always this way — Marco Pierre White is a giant light, just not in the limelight today.

If Gordon Ramsay is the more athletic, energy-driven, sometimes angry chef, then Marco Pierre White is more like the poet-chef. He speaks, at least nowadays, softly, intensely, authoritatively about food. I like Marco Pierre White and find him quite inspiring. Marco Pierre White was given three Michelin stars when he was just in his twenties. He was the rock ‘n roll, long-haired, English bad boy with a dangling cigarette— long before Gordon Ramsay or Anthony Bourdain (may he eat and drink in peace!), had come around.

When Marco Pierre White received the Michelin stars at the youngest age ever he did the unthinkable. As he recounts at a lecture given at the Oxford University, he recounts fishing alone, enjoying a smoke, and thinking to himself — “What does Michelin know about food?”

He realized they knew, at the very most, less than him — rendering the stars he received essentially worthless. So, he decided right there he would give them back, and so he did.

This is a strange move in the world of culinary reward — the highest level achieved shrugged off by its youngest ever recipient. One thinks of Marlon Brando not attending the Oscars, or how Jack Nicholson never appeared on talk shows. Something about rejecting an award or adornment in that way is attractive to imagine. Anyway, what do I know? I’m not up for any awards.

In a sense, Marco is partly a monster. Think of an artist — instead of a paintbrush, he’s holding a knife. Moody, smoky, sensitive, egotistical, flamboyant, dominating and intense. If Emeril Lagasse was the one who inspired me to start fucking up my parents' kitchen with sauces that made no sense and impromptu mystery stews, it was Marco that got me thinking about food in a more poetic, calmer sense. He was also probably the first artist (yes, I believe artist fits!) that showed me how the articulation of one’s craft was just as important as the craft itself.

It goes something like —

If you aim to be good at something, people may want to know about you and what you do — and you better sound like you know what you're doing.

And to speak intelligently or at least poetically about something is to have to think about it. And if one wants to speak about something well, they should probably get along with writing about it, too. This could very well be obvious to some (it was not for me), but I would say Marco Pierre White was my own example, and nothing encapsulated this idea better than his on-screen presence and how he chose to speak intelligently and precisely about food.

He was not always calm, but in his later interviews, he chose his words carefully. He had wisdom. He had mellowed out — but only a bit. If that weren’t enough, he also took my appreciation of food to a new level — inspired by a type of tranquility, a type of therapy, but also, leading me to hang onto another branch in the tree of a meaningful life.

And I mean that. Truly, I think the most important room in the house must be the kitchen. The place where people congregate and start their mornings. Where many end their days with dinner and a drink with family and friends. The kitchen is the engine block and I believe one could very well organize a wonderful life around the idea of a good working kitchen. One does not need too much space, nor does one need “talent” per se — it helps, but it isn’t required. Why?

Someone once said, “cooking is easy — it’s all in the shopping, the rest is just the correct application of heat.”

Well, perhaps it is not that easy, but it does reiterate a common truth surrounding the wisdom of food — keep it simple. Of course, there is always “keep it local”, “keep it fresh” — and these work, too, for obvious reasons. And this is good news — because while not everyone wants to be a chef, or wants to enter the restaurant industry or make a living from food, there are plenty of people who do want to learn to cook and enjoy making food they can feed to their family, and enjoy for themselves — and food is not just about food. It’s about energy, therapy, grace, love, health, and general drunkenness — not just drunk off the wine — but drunk off the experience, the privilege, the humility of preparing the food you eat with passion, precision, and the humility of spending time in the service of others — your guests, your family, your wife.

I am no chef. I am a pretty decent home cook, because I love being in the kitchen with my wife. I cook dinner for us every night, without fail — she covers oatmeal for breakfast and a light lunch, and I get the night shift. We have a garden with mint, basil, rosemary, thyme. When I need it, I’ll just hop to the garden and pluck what I need. Nothing makes me happier. For myself, cooking is an anti-anxiety activity. A stress reliever. A kind of therapy — as a sensualist type, I need to taste, touch, smell and feel many things — it’s what truly makes us rich. In many ways, it is what keeps me alive.

I’ll always be learning — I try to learn about food as much as possible. My friend Mark DiRuzza, a trained Chef in earnest, helps me along. We could speak endlessly about food. Before he became a chef, I would like to believe it was partly the meals we made together in San Francisco that inspired him to become a chef. We would go to Chinatown and find the tastiest, cheapest fruits available. One time we found lemons to die for. Lemons. Who would have known?

If you are good enough at anything, you might be referred to as a poet. Poetry to me is the purest form of personal expression. Marco Pierre White is a poet. I give him much of the credit for my appreciation of food. In the 1980’s, Marco hosted the Cooking With Marco television series and also Marco, where he cooks for other notable chefs. If you get the chance, get a look at some of his talks, interviews, and clips. If you watch close enough, you'll even see a young Gordon Ramsay in the back prepping onions.

To hitch onto Marco’s groove is to be given a lesson of sorts. I don’t know exactly what that lesson is per se, but I do know it is rich, worthy, and in some ways, even noble — as the act of cooking for oneself, in some sense, is a moral obligation. Doing it well makes it all the better. Not everyone can cook, but everyone can learn. It's a tremendous gift to give and receive.

When I cook for my wife — she’s always nearby. I almost always have a beer or wine when I cook. Inevitably in the evening, I’ll look to her and I am filled with gratitude.

Thanks Mark and Marco!

JSV

2021