About the Author

Marco Pierre White was born in Leeds in 1961. After training in Britain's finest kitchens, he opened Harveys, which earned three Michelin stars and was London's most talked-about restaurant. He went on to build a gastronomic empire that included many of the most acclaimed restaurants in the U.K. He lives in West London with his wife, Mati, and their three children. He also has a daughter by his first wife.

As a gossip columnist in the late eighties, James Steen phoned Harveys to speak with Marco Pierre White. A maître d' answered the phone and ranted on in a strong French accent about how White was "a monster, a crazy man, a lunatic to work for." The "maître d'" in question was White. Steen, now a freelance journalist, lives a short stroll from what was once Harveys, with his wife, Louise, and three children, Charlie, Billy, and Daisy.

Reviews

"A moving, unaffected, delightfully honest book. He may have been one of the most disagreeable bastards ever to command a kitchen brigade, but in the same guileless, unfiltered way in which he cursed out sous-chefs, he's told one hell of a story." --David Kamp, New York Times Book Review "Bubbles over with pot-hurling, star-chasing antics that earned him the title The Devil in the Kitchen." --Vanity Fair "His memoir walks us through his career like a grand tasting menu." --San Francisco Chronicle "[The] story of the working-class boy from Leeds who grows up and becomes a world-class chef, is fascinating, especially in our food and chef-obsessed world. Revealing... a juicy tale." --Chicago Sun-Times "Compelling... There hasn't been a food memoir this deliciously wicked since Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. I learned more about what it's like to cook in a restaurant kitchen than from any other book I've read." --Portland Oregonian "Tantalizing." --Vogue