Marcus Wareing has emerged from his infamous quarrel with his former boss Gordon Ramsay to establish himself as one of Britain’s leading chefs.
Text by Oliver Wadeson
Some chefs have courted glamour and recognition in the great British food revolution of the past 20 years. For others it simply comes to them. Marcus Wareing definitely belongs in the latter camp.
Kim Cattrall, Johnny Depp, Kate Moss and Goldie Hawn are among the regulars at his restaurant at The Berkeley hotel in London’s Knightsbridge. They eat here not for the photo opportunities outside but for the finest dining experience in London. 40-year-old Wareing is a chef who consistently delivers.
The culinary establishment tends to agree. His modern take on French cuisine with intense flavours, creatively executed to perfection has earned him two Michelin stars. The restaurant at The Berkeley is a fixture on the UK’s top 10 restaurants list in the Harden’s Guide (the British food bible), winning the No 1 slot in 2008 – knocking Gordon Ramsay off the top perch.
Peter Harden, co-editor of Harden, said rather pointedly at the time: “In the end, it is hardly surprising than an impassioned individual concentrating on one establishment – such as Marcus Wareing – has overtaken the flagship of an ever more celebrity-driven empire where the ‘name’ chef is rarely present.”
I arrive 10 minutes early for my scheduled meeting with Wareing at The Berkeley and, I must confess, was hoping to catch a glimpse of the likes of Depp or Moss in my waiting time. But I was whisked off on my arrival to the kitchen and a place at the chef’s table – the perfect seat to view Wareing at work.
The experience, to be frank, was fascinating but hardly exhilarating. Wareing, who arrived in London as a teenager straight out of catering college in his north-east England, made his name as part of Ramsay’s fledgling restaurant empire – first working alongside him at Le Gavroche in London’s Mayfair in the early nineties, then at Aubergine – Ramsay’s first big success – and later on as head chef at Petrus under Ramsay’s management, the original name of The Berkeley. But The Berkeley today is no Hell’s Kitchen and Wareing, as I was to witness, borrows little of Ramsay’s expletive-laden style at the stove. Putting the finishing touches to his final lunch orders of the day, he is calm, focused and in control. What is clear is that the joy of Wareing’s cuisine is not in the drama of its preparation but in the sheer quality of what is put on the plate, as anyone who has sampled his signature dish of Rhug Estate suckling pig will testify.
Ten minutes later Wareing is calmly discussing the breakdown in his relationship with Ramsay. It is two years now since he announced he would work directly for The Berkeley hotel – cutting Ramsay out of the arrangement – and the acrimony between the two began. Things
have obviously moved on – though Ramsay recently insisted on taking the name Petrus and using it for a different establishment and it would be unwise to underestimate the depth of emotion that was involved. Wareing said at the time that “if I never spoke to him again for the rest of my life, it wouldn’t bother me a bit” – that of the erstwhile partner who was best man at his wedding.
“Gordon has a hell of a lot of energy and we had a great time together,” he says. “He’s on the crest of a wave – he’s got restaurants all over the world, doing what he wants to do. But we are very different people.”
He does strongly suggest, however, that he is a far happier man since setting up on his own. “My wife couldn’t wait for it (the partnership with Ramsay) to end,” he says tellingly.
What Wareing wants to do, as he is at pains to explain, is to concentrate on the food and the food alone. And he believes the era of the celebrity chef is almost at an end.
“The cooking should be enough on its own,” he says. “We are moving into a different era. The cult of the chef is over – people want more. They know what they want to eat – they don’t want to be told by the chef what they want. And they want the whole experience – the hospitality, the front of house service, everything.”
And as Peter Harden noted, Wareing is a firm believer that if a chef puts his name to a restaurant he should be cooking the food on site. As a result we will definitely not be seeing him expanding on a global scale, though he is “actively looking for a new site in London”.
So that rules out Wareing following another old Ramsay protégé – Jason Atherton who now helms Table No 1 in Shanghai. In fact, Hong Kong is a city, he confesses, he has never visited but hopes to see “on my way back from the Sydney food festival later this year”.
That’s not to say he is not a fan of Far Eastern cuisine. “There is a great work ethic in Asian cuisine which I am very respectful of and that shows in the number of Michelin stars being awarded there now,” he says.
“I love the different flavours of Asian food, but I would never try to copy them – it would be an insult to the people who do it properly.”
Marcus Wareing at The Berkeley
The Berkeley hotel, Wilton Place, Knightsbridge, London. SW1X 7RL
+44 (0)20 7235 6000
My Favourite Things with Marcus Wareing
1) Last meal before execution?
It would have to be a full English breakfast (sausages, bacon, fried egg, mushrooms and tomato) with a pot of Yorkshire tea. Then nothing in the afternoon and a roast leg of lamb with Jersey Royal potatoes, fresh vegetables and a glass of fine Burgundy.
2) Comfort food?
A bowl of pasta with a good pesto or tomato sauce.
3) Chicken or pork?
It would have to be pork. A slow-roasted pig’s belly with crackling – enough fat to kill me!
4) Always wanted to be a chef?
Since I was about 10. My dad worked in fruit and vegetables and I was always interested in food. It’s a way of life and you have to make sacrifices – and you have to be a bit crazy.
5) Apart from Ramsay, what do you think of the other British celebrity chefs?
Well, Marco Pierre White was the country’s greatest chef when he was cooking. Heston Blumenthal is just brilliant. Jamie Oliver and Delia Smith are fabulous ambassadors for the industry – Jamie’s last book was outstanding.
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