The Devil in the Kitchen (11 page)

It was in December that I bumped into Albert, and he was extremely apologetic about the way it had all ended at Gavroche. “Why don’t you come back?” he asked, and I didn’t need much time to think about it. In the interim period of a couple of months I had reflected on the soup-ladle incident, and now I could appreciate the comedy behind my departure. My decision to leave had been irrational, I told myself, so I accepted Albert’s offer and pitched up to start my second stretch at Gavroche.

It didn’t last long. The magic wasn’t there anymore. In that short period of time, from September to December, my friends Roland Lahore, Danny Crow and Stephen Yare had gone, moved on. I saw the restaurant in a different light. What had previously seemed grand, exquisite and stylish no longer had the same effect upon me. I wasn’t blinded by the silver anymore. At some point early in 1983 I left Gavroche once again, this time on the most amicable terms. I left the restaurant but I didn’t leave the company. I took a job at the Roux brothers’ spectacularly upmarket butcher shop, Boucher La Martin, in Ebury Street.

Based on the Parisian shop of the same name, Boucher La Martin was run by Mark Bougère, the highly gifted chef who had been Albert’s right-hand man when I had joined the company nearly two years earlier. We not only supplied Albert’s restaurants; we also provided fine meat and poultry to the well-heeled shoppers of Chelsea and Knightsbridge. Being a butcher—or rather, a Roux butcher—has to be one of the toughest jobs I have ever done.

The working day started at five thirty in the morning. My first duty was to prepare the ducks. Entering the bird’s back cavity, let me tell you, requires the utmost skill. A lot of people are too heavy-handed, and when they’re finished, you could drive a bus up the back cavity. At Le Boucher I had to master the skill of opening up the cavity so that it was just large enough to get my fingers in and carefully scoop out the insides without staining the bird with its blood. The liver and heart were brought out whole, as were as the lungs, which had to be removed because if cooked, they add a bitterness to the final flavors. Each morning I would prepare about twenty ducks, their sharp bones stabbing my fingers. To ease the soreness I would have to wash with cold water and a bit of bleach.

The duck process took me about four hours and then I would tend to the customers in the shop. This was not the sort of butcher’s where you’d walk in and simply buy a chicken. Everything was prepared to order. If a customer wanted a poulet de Bresse for a fricassée, then I would chop it up accordingly; if it was a chicken for roasting, then the bird would be beautifully tied and trussed. I had to be disciplined with my knife and hands and I had to work quickly. In the end it shut down, but Boucher La Martin has to have been one of Britain’s finest butcher shops and is another credit to the legendary Albert.

Although money had never played an important role in my life, in the fall of 1983 I spotted an opportunity to earn a fortune and that is what seduced me away from the butcher shop and the Roux brothers’ empire. There was a pub called the Six Bells serving the punters who shopped in the hustle and bustle of the King’s Road and I learned that the landlord was looking for a head chef. When I turned up to see him, he seemed quite impressed by my experience and offered me the job. However, he was adamant about the money. “I’ll give you a staff budget of five hundred pounds a week,” he said. “That’s your budget. Spend it how you like.” Maybe he thought I’d have to take on a staff of five and a washer-up, but I had devised a way of earning a staggering amount of money. I paid myself £400 per week, which was a fortune for a chef then, and even by today’s standards would be good money for a pub chef. That left me with £100 from the budget, so I hired a sous chef who was about my age, an American lad called Mario Batali. There was no cash left for a washer-up, so Mario and I agreed to share the chore. I was quite proud of the deal—signs of my business brain were evident even back then. We did a menu of good lamb and sweetbreads and crayfish, that kind of thing.

Sturdy Mario, with his mass of red hair, was an interesting and special guy, but not half as interesting as he would later become. After getting a degree in Seattle, he came to London to train at Le Cordon Bleu, but he got bored with the college course and chucked it in—Cordon Bleu’s loss was my gain. He used to work hard during the day and play hard during the night and then he couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. So he loved his sleep and he loved Joy Division (he’d incessantly hum “She’s Lost Control”), but he also loved his food. He was passionate about cooking. What he needed was a bit of discipline, so I found myself treating him as harshly as I had been treated by my former head chefs. I used to murder Mario every day, physically, mentally and emotionally. I called him “Rusty Bollocks” but he was funny and intelligent.

He responded to bollockings. Even though he may have faked it, he responded to them. If he cocked up a dish, then it would go in the bin and he’d apologize and pretend to understand. I would push him along—“Move it, Rusty Bollocks, faster, faster”—and after service we’d head off clubbing in the West End, though it was almost impossible to pull birds with him.

One day I sent him out to get some tropical fruits and he returned with a bag of avocados. To this day, I do not know if he was taking the mickey.

From the tiny kitchen of that pub I would eventually go on to win three Michelin stars while Mario returned to the States, where he’s today hailed as the king of New York’s restaurants and his places include Babbo and Lupa. He’s won a heap of awards and plaudits including “Man of the Year” from
GQ
magazine. Although we only worked together for a matter of months, he regards me as a mentor, which is nice, and in interviews he often mentions me in entirely affectionate terms. For instance, in July 2004, he said, “[Marco] was a genius, and an evil one at that. Last time we spoke he had launched a hot pan of risotto at my chest in service.”

A few years after we’d worked together, Mario’s parents came for dinner at my restaurant, Harveys, and introduced themselves. They were very pleasant people, but I remember looking at his mother and thinking, I can’t believe something Mario’s size came out of you.

I finally jacked in the job at the Six Bells in spring 1984 because I missed working in fine kitchens. The pub wage, while amazing, was outweighed by an overwhelming desire to cook in the best restaurants. There was also an incident with the barman at the Six Bells. We were having an argument one day when he said to me, “At least I’ve got a mother.” He saw a look of anger cross my face. Then he picked up a knife, as if to warn me off, and I tried to grab it. The blade sliced the palm of my hand and the scar is still there today. Once I had the knife, I chinned him. Motherless readers will sympathize.

T
HE FINEST RESTAURANTS
in London in the summer of 1984 were Chez Nico, Gavroche and La Tante Claire. I had worked in the first two, but still, I needed to acquire knowledge and experience, so thought I’d try my luck at La Tante Claire.

It was a small restaurant in Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea, and while it had neither the magic of the Box Tree nor the grandness of Gavroche, it was run by one of the most gifted chefs of his time. French-born Pierre Koffmann, who years earlier had worked with the Roux brothers and had picked up his second Michelin star in 1980. Known as Pierre the Bear, he was a big, bearded man somewhere in his forties and he served big, hearty food such as pavé de boeuf, pig’s trotters and turbot à la grande moutarde. He also had a reputation for being hard but straight—no bullshit—and it was said that he employed only French chefs.

English and proud of it, I turned up and knocked on the door, just as I had done six years earlier at the Hotel St. George and then later at Le Gavroche. I told Pierre that I had worked at the Box Tree, but it didn’t matter—there was no room at the inn, so to speak. “I’m sorry,” said Pierre. “I have no vacancies, simple as that.” Then he added, “Why don’t you go and ask at Le Gavroche? They might have something going.”

It sounds silly now, but I didn’t want to tell him I had already worked at Gavroche. Perhaps I was just reluctant to get into that conversation, because when I thought of Gavroche, the first image that came into my mind was of a soup ladle pecking my nose, and Pierre had better things to do than stand there and listen to that story. “But it’s here that I want to work,” I insisted. “Not at Gavroche. I really want to work here at Tante Claire.”

Again he came back with, “But I haven’t got any vacancies.”

I had no choice. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” I said, “I’ll work for nothing.” Pierre wasn’t going to turn down a freebie and he swiftly ushered me into the kitchen so I could start my new job, or rather, “pastime,” because for the first month of working in his small kitchen I wasn’t paid a bean.

I think that even Pierre, who was seriously passionate about food, was slightly taken aback by my enthusiasm. I worked hard through my breaks and often felt his gaze upon me as I whipped up sauces and speedily prepared dishes, absorbing the pressure of his Michelin-starred restaurant. When he asked me to do some specialties, I produced dishes mastered at Gavroche, and that’s when the penny dropped. Clearly confused as he watched me rustle up dishes being served by Albert Roux’s team, Pierre said, “Marco, where did you learn those things?”

I turned to my perplexed boss; it was time to come clean. “I used to work at Gavroche,” I told him and then carried on whipping and speedily preparing.

Although I was thrilled to be working at Tante Claire, I saw many other chefs come and go. In fact, Pierre’s kitchen had staff turnover like I’ve never seen. Every week the brigade went from ten chefs on a Monday to four by Friday, and this is why: At the beginning of the week a batch of six chefs would arrive from France, dispatched by one of Pierre’s Parisian contacts. They would start off jolly, thrilled and privileged because they were working for the great Monsieur Koffmann. But they soon cracked.

To begin with, they couldn’t take Pierre’s bollockings, his insistence on perfection. Most of the time, Pierre had a big palette knife in his right hand, and chefs who fell behind would get a whack on the arse. “Is he always like this?” the French lads would whisper to me. Their lives were made even more wretched by the claustrophobic conditions. The kitchen was cramped and our work surface was a big table in the middle. Like sardines in a tin, we had to fight for space. As the week went on, they would drop out. By Tuesday, we might be one man down, then another would fail to show up on Wednesday; the remaining Frenchmen would invariably break on Thursday. Come the following Monday morning a new batch of chefs would arrive from France, like troops going over the top.

Then came Pierre’s day of reckoning: his new recruits failed to make the Channel crossing, I imagine, so he made me an official member of staff. The pay was pitiful and I was glad of my savings from the Six Bells. French recruits aside, there were now four regulars working at that table in the kitchen: Pierre and his assistant, Bruno, and then the English contingent, i.e., me and the kitchen porter, Big Barry, whom Pierre adored.

Pierre was a workaholic who got through the day by having three ritualistic tea breaks. Each break lasted precisely five minutes and took place at a specific time—the first was at noon; the second at six forty-five, just before evening service; and the third at the end of evening service at ten thirty. The tea was always made by Big Barry, who, as a reward for serving it, was allowed a cuppa himself. No one else in that kitchen was entitled a tea break. It was a rule that distinguished the boss from his minions.

However, one morning just before midday, I heard the kettle go on and saw Barry reaching for the tea bags when Pierre shocked me by asking, “Would you like a cup of tea?” It is probably the most common question asked in tea-loving Britain but there, in Koffmann’s kitchen, it was a question I had never heard. Positively flattered, I joined Pierre and Barry for a noon cuppa and then, at six forty-five, my self-esteem was boosted once more when Pierre asked those special words, “Would you like a cup of tea, Marco?” Again, at ten thirty, I was handed a steaming mug of Tetley. I had made it into the inner circle. Tante Claire’s elite club had just increased its membership by a third. The duo had become a trio.

Pierre had finally recognized my talents and devotion to the job, and what’s more, his lovely wife, Annie—who ran the show in the front of house—took a shining to me. I came to realize that if Annie liked you, then her husband would think twice about getting rid of you. However, it was not as easy to endear myself to the other members of the French staff who worked front of house. Traditionally, Pierre’s wife had looked after the restaurant, but when I was there she had just had a baby, and so she only came in for a couple of hours each day. This meant the maître d’ was running the show. He looked a bit like Dracula and I don’t recall him being very friendly to me. I convinced myself that he saw me as the English boy, the one he and the waiters didn’t like.

Every day there was a staff lunch before service and everyone would eat the meal in the restaurant, but because I always worked through my breaks, sweeping the backyard or preparing some scallops, I had never gone for lunch. One day, however, Pierre said, “Leave your work, Marco, and come through for some lunch.” I couldn’t say no to the boss, so I helped myself to some food from the kitchen and went through to the restaurant to join the rest of the team. The chefs and waiters were all sitting together at a large table but there was no room for me and I was reluctant to ask someone to move up. I started to walk back through to the kitchen—I would have my lunch in there—when I noticed that a smaller table had been laid. One little table with one chair, one napkin, one knife and one fork. It had been laid for me, but there was no way I was going to sit there alone. I’m not having that, I thought, I’m not going to be treated like an idiot. Pierre spotted the problem. “Everyone move up,” he yelled at the staff. “Marco, come and sit next to me.” It was the only time I had been in Tante Claire’s dining room and it would be a few more years before I could walk in there again, as a paying customer.