Marcus Wareing:
back in charge
The split from Gordon Ramsay hasn’t hurt this London chef
Interview by Josh Sims
Photography by Max Diamond
“TIMES ARE CHANGING FOR CHEFS,” says Marcus Wareing as he arrives for the Voyager photo shoot on a Monday morning at The Berkeley in London. “In any restaurant chefs used to come and go on a whim. You’d get 18-year-olds coming in, lording it up and saying they were going to have their own restaurants next year. But there aren’t that many jobs out there now. And you don’t make it in fine dining without a lot of hard work, not unless you’re born with a silver spoon up your arse. And I wasn’t.”
Wareing sounds ebullient, and with good cause. The Stockport-born chef, who at 12 was delivering fruit and vegetables to hotels with his father, left school at 15 for catering college. His success, therefore, is all the greater, because “I didn’t know what opportunities were. I never got career advice. My dad’s was the old-fashioned philosophy of getting out of bed at 6am and working for the whole day.”
This month marks one year since the chef took the site of the famed London restaurant Petrus and relaunched it as ‘Marcus Wareing at The Berkeley’. And what a year it’s been: Wareing now has two Michelin stars (with a third hotly tipped) and this month launches his second cookbook, Nutmeg and Custard. Next month sees his profile rise even higher as one of the top chefs to take part in the inaugural London Restaurant Festival (see boxout) – akin to a foodie’s Edinburgh Festival. “I’m proud to be part of the London restaurant scene,” Wareing states firmly, “I love the buzz of the city.”
The autumn also sees a staff expansion programme that has Wareing bringing back into the fold colleagues from his past. He already has 24 chefs under him, all for just 40 covers at lunch and 65 for dinner. Still, you need an army to meet demand for those custard tarts with Garibaldi biscuits – a recipe based on his grandmother’s which has become the chef’s unlikely signature dish.
“The last year has been a massive dose of fresh air for me. I’m no longer a puppet. I’m in charge,” says Wareing, soon to turn 40. “A year ago I didn’t know where we would be now. I was working for myself, with no backers.
All that Jane [his wife who runs the administration side] and I did together was worry, wonder or talk about work. I vowed that had to end. Her main focus in life is our children and we wanted her to get back to that. And I still have my love of cooking. I still wake up excited about the work every day.”
That, in itself, is something of an accolade. Wareing came to command his own ship amid controversy. He broke away from the company of his one-time friend and mentor Gordon Ramsay, resulting in legal action which saw London’s Berkeley Hotel cancel its arrangement with Ramsay for its in-house restaurant Petrus and hand the premises to Wareing. Much invective between the chefs followed. Last year Wareing picked up Harden’s prestigious Best London Restaurant vote ahead of Restaurant Gordon Ramsay. And later this year Ramsay returns with a restaurant under the Petrus name, situated just around the corner from The Berkeley.
“But I really couldn’t care less,” says Wareing, with a Northern bluntness. “Does it spark up the old competition? No – that’s no competition for me. It’s a new chapter for Petrus and that’s great. But it was my baby and can’t be the same without me. They should really call it ‘New Petrus’.”
Spats are, of course, part of the hothouse celebrity chef world of which he is a reluctant part, by dint of occasional TV appearances and cooking for the Queen’s 80th birthday – for which he first updated the custard tart. Reluctant because, while he acknowledges that it has raised interest in good food and eating out, and provided the industry with “a touch of rock and roll”, it has also taken chefs out of the kitchen and turned them into brand managers.
“People like Jamie [Oliver], Gordon [Ramsay], Gary [Rhodes] have so many restaurants because they can fill them and they can fill them because of TV. People still ask for that custard tart because of TV. But the more you’re on TV, the less time you’re in the kitchen.”
Indeed, in recessionary times, when diners are demanding ever more value, the fact that his name over the door signifies he actually does the cooking has been a huge boon. “Are you saying that a chef with three stars at several restaurants around the world can hit that quality level at all of them, as well as one man with one house?
I’m not so sure.”
It is why, should he open a second restaurant (which will not happen for at least five years, he estimates) it would probably not carry his name. “I’m staying here in this kitchen. It’s where I belong,” he adds. “Interest in celebrity chefs is going to slow down now, as it has with celebrity gardening or DIY. I think we’re at last getting back to brass tacks.”
For all his fighting talk, however, and his F-word frequency (a remnant of his old mentor perhaps), this retrenchment suits him down to the kitchen tiles. He may have an impressive pedigree, having been a sous chef under Ramsay at Aubergine (“Get on a ride with him and it’s a f*****g roller-coaster”) and secured his own place in culinary history with his ground-breaking spell reinvigorating the Savoy’s Grill Room. But Wareing’s enthusiasm now comes from the shake-up he sees for restaurants across the UK and, with it, a return to the old way of doing things. The industry has come to a place where, as Wareing puts it, a restaurant has had to contend with “a level of expectation of the address, the designer, the table space, the music. And I wish it was just about the food because that all comes at a price to hospitality. Now we’re coming to a time for restaurants built on customer care, a great team and a lot of hard work. And chefs that are just there to cook.”
In other words, the media froth generated by tantrums and tarts is, he hopes, irrelevant. The proof of the pudding is literally in the eating.
“I can’t be doing with these top-end chefs throwing their toys out of the kitchen,” says Wareing. “It fills pages but if I have to raise my voice in the kitchen, then something’s wrong with the whole set up. We work almost in silence. And as for that custard tart, that’s still the recipe I’m trying to shake off. Why? Well, I don’t want to be remembered for a egg custard tart, do I? That’s my biggest fear in life.”
Marcus Wareing at The Berkeley Hotel, Wilton Place, London SW1X, +44 (0)20 7235 1200; www.the-berkeley.co.uk
Nutmeg and Custard is published by Bantam Press (£25) this month
LONDON RESTAURANT FESTIVAL
Marcus Wareing is among the high-profile chefs endorsing the first London Restaurant Festival, which will be held 8-13 October. The brainchild of fearsome food critic Fay Maschler of the London Evening Standard, the six-day festival will include dozens of different events including a temporary restaurant on the roof of Selfridges, a film festival with matching dishes, and a Sunday roast cooked for 400. Restaurants around the city will be offering special menus starting at £10. www.visitlondon.com/londonrestaurantfestival
WAREING RECIPE
FILLET OF SALMON WITH BABY LEEKS, LOBSTER, CRÈME FRAÎCHE AND TARRAGON
(from Nutmeg and Custard) Serves 4
INGREDIENTS:
150g crème fraîche
1½ tsp table salt
1 tsp capers, finely chopped
1 bunch tarragon leaves, finely chopped
25g unsalted butter
4 tbsp chicken stock
16 baby leeks, blanched and refreshed
100g lobster meat, from the claw
2 tbsp vegetable oil
4 portions salmon fillet, pin-boned, skin on and scored using a sharp knife
METHOD:
First whisk the crème fraîche, then add half a teaspoon of the salt, the capers and half the chopped tarragon. Heat the butter and chicken stock together with another half teaspoon of the salt and whisk until combined. Remove 2 tablespoons of this liquid and set aside, then add the leeks to the mixture in the pan to warm through. Place the lobster meat in a small saucepan with the reserved liquid and gently heat through. Heat the vegetable oil in a large non-stick frying pan. Season the salmon on both sides with half a teaspoon of salt. When the oil is hot, add the fish to the pan, skin side down. Shake the pan gently to allow the oil to get under the skin so that it browns evenly. Leave for 4 minutes, then remove the pan from the heat and gently turn the fillets over using a spatula. Add the remaining chopped tarragon to the warmed lobster, then place four leeks in the centre of each of four plates. Arrange the lobster meat around the plates, then lay the salmon skin side up on top of the leeks. Place a spoonful of the crème fraîche mixture on to the salmon and serve immediately.
