dharold

White Slave, the Marco Pierre White autobiography. It's not particularly in his voice, as a quick comparison of his restaurant reviews in Waitrose Food Illustrated and the authorial voice in the book will confirm, but the anecdotes are interesting, as much for what they contradict about the legend as for what they confirm. It was all rather a tumble at the end, over a decade compressed into the last couple of chapters as though nothing of great interest had happened to him since he stopped cooking. There's some juice about other chefs who've offended him (the stuff about Albert Roux is revelatory, about Gordon Ramsay less so); the mildly interesting tale of the sinking of his restaurant Titanic; and a little bit about his much rumoured marital bust-ups. But nothing in the last 3rd is as well realised or remembered as the first parts of the book, where he was serving apprenticeships and opening Harvey's. For such a charming man the book is rather charmless. That said, if you have any interest in the story of the man who was clearly the most important British chef of the 20th century then you'll need to read this, and will probably get enough out of it to make it worthwhile. I'm about half way through Neil Simpson's very "tabloid" Gordon Ramsay biog and I have Ramsay's own "Humble Pie" ready to go after that.