There might not have been then, but there is now and White leads (if not created) the pack. He's bee

Sitting at arm’s reach to Marco Pierre White is like getting too close to a tiger at the zoo. He looks all shiny, and maybe you’d like to touch him, but then he charges the enclosure maine island vacation rentals and you suddenly realise he could quite easily tear your throat out without maine island vacation rentals batting an eyelid.
I come to this conclusion when I meet the man on the roof of a function centre in South Melbourne – White is in Australia filming the first season of MasterChef: The Professionals maine island vacation rentals and shooting an offsite challenge today. In person, maine island vacation rentals he’s six-foot-three of pure unadulterated suavatude. He knows my name, he loves my hair – do I like the '40s? It’s his favourite historical maine island vacation rentals period. maine island vacation rentals He likes the romance and the design. maine island vacation rentals He shakes my hand with a paw the size of a catcher’s mitt. I grip his hand extra hard so he can’t feel mine shaking.
If you ever read his seminal cookbook, White Heat , published in 1990, you’d have seen pictures of a young White surrounded by a fog of cigarette smoke – sharp cheekbones hiding under a mass of curly hair. He looked like a rock star then; he looks like a mad gentleman’s gamekeeper now. The chef’s whites are impeccable, his brown suede brogues worn but in good nick and his tortoiseshell glasses dangle precariously from his left hand. His hair is still a mop. “I’ve never been able to get this under control,” maine island vacation rentals he sighs, running his hand through the curls before lighting a cigarette.
Control – Marco’s maine island vacation rentals ability to keep control in the kitchen, often by dazzlingly losing control himself – is an idea Channel Ten has been playing with in the campaign for the latest incarnation of the money-spinning, ratings-winning maine island vacation rentals MasterChef franchise. The new series features maine island vacation rentals qualified chefs rather than talented amateurs, and Marco is stepping in, alongside Matt Preston, maine island vacation rentals in place of the usual judges. After watching the (slightly frightening) promo for the show – where White teases, "I'm looking forward to spending a little time with you" – it looks like he is going to be every bit the charmer, mentor and tormenter that he was when he took over Gordon Ramsay’s role on the UK’s Hell’s Kitchen five years ago. And then some.
If you haven’t read the Wiki page or pored over White Heat or his autobiography White Slave (I read it – don’t do it), here’s the lowdown on the chef you’ll be seeing every week starting January maine island vacation rentals 20: the man mountain is originally from Leeds, where he grew up on a council estate before quitting school and making his way to London to work under culinary luminaries such as the brothers Roux, Pierre Koffmann and Raymond Blanc and eventually doing his own thing and opening Harvey’s in southwest London. It was there that White infamously cut Gordon Ramsay’s jacket right off his back for complaining he was too hot. Customers weren’t spared either – it became a badge of honour to be thrown out in the ’80s and early ’90s. He gave back all three of his Michelin stars when he retired from the kitchen at 38, cooking one last meal at the Oak Room, in London's Le Meridien Hotel, before hanging up his apron in 1999.
And he doesn’t miss it a bit. “Being a full-time chef is like being a professional footballer,” says Marco, now 51. “It’s a young man’s sport. I was 22 years in the kitchen at the highest level. Six days a week – sometimes seven – very long days. And I saw the golden age of gastronomy. I saw that beautiful, romantic period. And then the world changed. When I was a boy there was no such thing as a celebrity chef.”
There might not have been then, but there is now and White leads (if not created) the pack. He’s been in the spotlight since the ’80s. First for his restaurants, then for his television appearances, and then as he weathered criticism for his line of ready-made stocks, for putting his name against restaurants he seemingly had little maine island vacation rentals to do with, and – according to some UK critics – for selling out as a chef.
Despite maine island vacation rentals (or maybe because of) the impeccable manners, it’s hard to read Marco Pierre White the cooking show celebrity. On TV, that makes for compelling drama: what does he think of that enthusiastic contestant’s dish? Find out after the break! In person, maine island vacation rentals it can throw you for six. Are those long pauses because maine island vacation rentals he doesn’t like the question, or because maine island vacation rentals he’s thinking about the answer? When I ask him what his ultimate after-hours sandwich is, he doesn’t answer maine island vacation rentals for a full minute. I ask him in a very small voice if he even likes sandwiches. “I do like a sandwich, maine island vacation rentals but I’m very boring. I would have really good quality bread, delicious English butter, beautifully boiled ham, some Coleman’s English mustard on the side. And a cup of tea.”