Humble Pie (4 page)

I got a call from Pierre Koffmann, the chef and owner of a restaurant in Chelsea with three Michelin stars. His head chef had just walked out, and he wanted to know if I was interested in the job. Of course I said yes, even though what I was really after was a place of my own. At the time, that restaurant was the envy of every chef in London. That included my ‘old friend’ Marco, who was often on the phone pestering me to see him. One Friday night, I finally agreed.

Marco was going great guns at his restaurant,
Harvey’s
, and he was involved in another restaurant called
The Canteen
, where he’d installed my old flatmate Stephen Terry as chef. Why did I agree to meet him? That’s simple. He held out the biggest bait of all.

‘How do you fancy your own restaurant?’ he said.

I met him at
The Canteen
, and we jumped in a cab. He wouldn’t tell me where we were going, but eventually we wound up in Park Walk. Then we walked into this restaurant. It was all galvanised steel and black paint.

Marco said, ‘All this can be yours. My other partner at
The Canteen
– he owns it. It’s losing ten grand a week.’

The following week, Marco told me that I could buy 25 per cent of the restaurant and reopen it as mine a week later. I was still only twenty-six, but I made my mind up quickly. I went to the Midland Bank and borrowed £10,000 for the restaurant, which I renamed
Aubergine
. Marco had no financial involvement in the deal. He was just setting it up. I knew he would have had his reasons but I was too excited to think about it much.

I started on a £22,000 salary, and I was meant to open the following week.

‘Fucking hell,’ I said to Marco. ‘How am I supposed to open on the first of October when I’ve got no staff and no menu?’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll help you.’

You’ll be wondering why I wasn’t more wary. I was just excited about having my own place. I didn’t ever sit back and think: who’s this? What are they up to? A lot of Italians got involved in
the deal, but I never queried that. Just let me cook, I thought.

It was all very tough. But I had a good right-hand man – or at least I did in the end. The day before I left my old restaurant, Marcus Wareing came in. He and I had worked together before, and he was a great chef.

I didn’t offer him a job there and then because I had no money to pay him, but as soon as I did, I brought him in.

So then there were three – me, Marcus and a junior chef. And later, of course, all the great chefs who are still with me now came through that kitchen. I didn’t know it at the time, but
Aubergine
turned out to be the greatest training ground for chefs in Britain.

Meanwhile, my private life was getting tricky. I’d met Tana, who is now my wife and the mother of our four children, but she was going out with a friend of mine, Tim Powell. This was in 1993–4. Not long after we’d opened
Aubergine
, Tim and Tana came in for dinner. God, I thought, there’s my mate with that stunning girlfriend of his, whom I’d met briefly a year before when he picked me up at an airport.

That evening, I cooked my heart out. Then Tana had a New Year’s Eve party, to which I was invited. And there was Tim, telling me how his future father-in-law, Chris Hutcheson, Tana’s dad, was going to set him up in a restaurant. Meanwhile, I’m in business with a bunch of Italians I’m not quite sure of.

About three months later, I heard that Chris had sent Tim off to New York for work experience with a famous American chef. I couldn’t believe my ears: the little bastard was getting everything that I ever wanted. I buried myself in my work.

The only relief I could get was from my Yamaha motorbike. On a Saturday night, I’d meet all my mates, and we’d all pile out onto the M4. We’d sit on our petrol tanks and play dare to see who could hold their bike at full throttle, and keep it there from bridge to bridge. It was an amazing adrenalin rush, and the only way I could relax after work.

I couldn’t afford to park this bike anywhere, but Tim and Tana had an amazing flat by the river, and Tim had said that I could park my bike in his garage there. It must have been early summer, June, when I went down there late at night to get my bike. I pressed the buzzer to the flat, and Tana answered. I’d left my keys at their
place in case Tim had to move the bike during the week.

‘Where’s Tim?’ I said.

‘Didn’t you know? Tim and I separated a week ago.’

‘You’re joking!’ I said. I tried to seem sympathetic, but inside I was dancing a jig.

So, boom! I was straight upstairs. I didn’t bother going to Soho to see my mates. Instead, I stayed with her, talking, until about six in the morning. Then I asked her if she fancied coming out on the bike with me. Tim had his own helmet somewhere. So, as dawn broke, we set off.

That was how we started seeing each other, and we married in December 1996.

We got our first Michelin star at
Aubergine
fourteen months after we opened our doors, in 1995. Two years later, in 1997, we got our second star. We went from nothing at all to two stars in just three years. Only one other restaurant in Britain had ever done that. Everyone came: Princess Margaret, David Bowie, Robert de Niro. We were so busy that not even Madonna could get a table.

It was around this time that my relationship with the Italians involved in the restaurant began to get difficult.

A few months after I got my first star, Marco told me that he needed to talk to me.

‘My chef is leaving,’ he said. ‘I’m going to give you a share of the business, I’m going to make you my best of chefs, and I’m going to pay you £100,000 a year. You’ll never need to worry about money again. Don’t tell me now. I want
you to think about it. Let’s have dinner on Sunday night.’

Fuck me.

That Sunday, over dinner, I told him.

‘That’s an amazing offer,’ I said. ‘The thought of running your three-star restaurant is a huge honour. But I was with you at
Harvey’s
when you got three Michelin stars, and, to be honest, all I want to do now is win three stars myself.’

His reaction was shocking.

‘You’re fucking mad,’ he said. Then he started raving on about my Italian business partners, about how much debt they were in, and what their plans were for
Aubergine
.

‘They’re about to close it down,’ he said. ‘They’re going to sell the restaurant, and you won’t have a pot to piss in.’

So I went to my Italian contact.
Aubergine
was fully booked. We were taking forty grand a week, at least. Weren’t we secure?

‘We’re not making any money, Gordon,’ he said.

Then he gave his side of the story about Marco. Things had started to go wrong over at
The Canteen
, and not long after this, Marco quit.

Then some odd things started to happen.
Aubergine
picked up a bad review by Jonathan
Meades in
The Times
. At the time I thought that Marco might be somehow behind it, and I began to wonder if he was trying to get back at me for turning down his offer. I felt the same about a horrible review by A. A. Gill, the restaurant critic of
The Sunday Times.
A. A. Gill and Marco are best buddies, so it was easy to convince myself that they were working together. With hindsight, however, I now know this was just down to my paranoia. The stuff they were writing was so obviously rubbish, but still, I felt very nervous.

Then, out of the blue, the Italians told me that they wanted to open a second fine dining restaurant. As before, they would give me a 10 per cent share. All I had to do was find a chef. I immediately thought of Marcus Wareing, and we opened
L’Oranger
in St James’s. It was a huge success, and won a Michelin star after just six months.

The next thing that happened was that other companies started sniffing round with a view to buying us. I wasn’t interested in selling, but the Italians were. People started to tell me that Marco and the Italians were working together and that they were going to sell my restaurant without telling me. Marco, of course, denied this. With only a 10 per cent share, I would have had very little control.

To make things worse, Tana had just got pregnant with our first baby, I’d got myself a new mortgage, and I was up to my eyeballs in debt. I’d created this great restaurant, and I’d nearly killed myself doing it. I had worked at the stove for sixteen hours a day, and now it was about to be taken away from me.

The night that I came up with my master plan, I couldn’t sleep. So I went up to a little café by Chelsea Bridge and got myself a cup of coffee and a bacon sandwich. Then I sat there all night, plotting how I could secure my bollocks. I needed an idea that would turn the Italians against Marco because, that way, all their plans would crumble to dust. And I needed to keep my own nose clean.

By morning, I had it. I would arrange for
Aubergine
’s reservations book to disappear, and to the Italians, at least, I would make it clear that Marco was to blame.

In the days before computers and the Internet, a top restaurant’s reservations book was worth its weight in gold. We were fully booked between four and six months in advance, and the book had details of every single one of those bookings. Without it, the place would sink into total chaos. So that is what happened. I made it disappear.

Chaos followed. We had hundreds of calls from punters who didn’t actually have reservations, but who were happy to try it on, knowing the mess we were in. The newspapers wanted details, and I was all too happy to do as many interviews as they wanted.

‘Only someone in the trade would know the full value of a reservations book,’ I told journalists.

Marco denied his involvement. Besides, who else would want our reservations book? Where did I keep the diary during all this? Oh, I had it in a very safe place.

The Italians were totally pissed off with Marco. They were right back on my side. I was relieved. I no longer liked Marco, and I no longer trusted or wanted him to ‘help’ me at the restaurant. It was my own place or nothing.

But I did string Marco along. He had taken over the restaurant at the
Café Royal
. He had this idea that he would go into partnership with Chris Hutcheson, by this time my father-in-law, and me, and let us run the
Café Royal
. We went along with it, but Marco didn’t know that we had plans to buy another restaurant. Whenever Marco mentioned the
Café Royal
, I’d pretend to be interested, and whenever the Italians talked about my future with them, I’d smile and nod.
The smirk on my face must have been a mile wide. We had funding for the new restaurant,
Royal Hospital Road.
No one knew, but we were on our way to the real starting line.

The deal on
Royal Hospital Road
was completed – secretly, of course. I felt very excited. It was time for me to resign from
Aubergine
. This should have been easy, but, thanks to the Italians, it turned into one of the most dramatic moments in my career so far. One of the Italians, Giuliano, had bought out the others, and now had 90 per cent of
Aubergine
. But I still hadn’t signed anything.

Giuliano wanted Marcus Wareing to sign a four-year deal with the company. So far, Marcus had refused. Then a small discrepancy was found in the food costs at
L’Oranger
. This gave Giuliano an excuse to turn on Marcus.

‘Sign this fucking deal or I’m going to sack you,’ he said.

Marcus didn’t sign. So he was sacked and marched off the premises.

Then I gathered all of the staff around me, both from
L’Oranger
and
Aubergine
, and told them that I was going to stand by Marcus. I would resign as a director, and I was going to open a new restaurant.

‘You’re more than welcome to come and join me,’ I said. ‘I hope there’ll be a job there for all of you, but at the moment, nothing is certain. If you want to hand in your notice and follow me, that’s up to you. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen next, but, in my view, both these restaurants are finished.’

What happened next was amazing.

On the spot, forty-six members of staff walked out, and, in doing so, closed two of London’s best restaurants.

Both
Aubergine
and
L’Oranger
were shut for several weeks while Giuliano tried to get new staff. That meant that the company was losing an awful lot of money. More than £100,000 a week was being spent in the two restaurants. Customers with reservations took their business elsewhere. Possible future customers did not want to eat in either place if their chefs were no longer in the kitchens.

Those restaurants
were
Marcus and me.

Of course, the press had a field day.

When I resigned, Giuliano was still saying that we could work things out, but I’d waited eighteen months to have my say, and I wasn’t having any of it.

‘Don’t you know how hard I’ve been working over the last fucking year?’ I said. ‘My wife was pregnant with our first child, and we had all sorts of problems with that, and all that time you were trying to undermine me. I swear to God, I will never even think of doing business with you again. Now, you own these restaurants. Fuck off and run them!’

A few weeks later, on the first of September 1998, we opened the doors of my new restaurant,
Royal Hospital Road
. I found jobs for every single person who’d supported Marcus and me. It was thrilling. But our troubles weren’t over yet.

Being issued with a writ is never what you’d call pleasant, but I was handed this one on my way back from my father’s funeral.

Giuliano was going to sue me for a lot of money for breaching my contract by leaving
Aubergine
and
L’Oranger
. He also accused me of breaking my contract with him by stealing his staff. I was going to fight him all the way, even though I had no spare cash for legal fees.

Giuliano wanted revenge for what had happened after the Great Walk-Out. He was also furious because we planned to open a second restaurant just a few doors up from
L’Oranger
. We could afford to do that because things were going so well at
Royal Hospital Road.
In the January after we opened,
Aubergine
lost one of its Michelin stars and
Royal Hospital Road
gained two.

I had to sell our house to fight the legal battle, and we moved back to renting. That was a terrible thing to have to do. My childhood had made me long for a safe, secure home of my own. And I felt terrible for Tana, who had Megan, our new baby.

In the end, the judge strongly advised us to settle out of court. If we carried on, even the winner wouldn’t get very much money. So, four months after I received the writ, we settled. I needed to work on my restaurants. We were on our way now, and we couldn’t afford to let anything else stand in our way. And, as usual, I was broke.