Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A chef and restaurateur, the youngest ever to win two Michelin stars, known for his fiery temper with customers.
On the island
Eight records
Come Up and See Me (Make Me Smile)
It's just one of those great songs. It reminds me of when I was a a young boy of sixteen when I first left home. It was like the first time in my life I'd ever been given total freedom. It's just the test.
I think that taught. those days when I left school. And I remember saving up my money, my fifteen pounds a week or twenty pounds a week or sometimes forty pounds a week depending how much overtime I did. I used to run off and buy all these outrageous clothes or what I thought were outrageous and it was just rather nice sort of being able to express myself for the first time with clothes.
Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart
There's a side of me which is just incredibly romantic and … I don't really like to portray this image. I don't like to show this part of myself off. I don't know why. It's just you know, it's very hard expressing emotions sometimes. It's very hard to show what you feel about people … I'd much prefer just to put this song on. I was pouring them a glass of wine or making them a cup of coffee or something, let him do the talking for me.
I suppose my real hero, if I've ever got one in life, is Keith Richards. He's just a man who just lives life to the full, and I envy that.
I sort of took time out from cooking and … 83 I think it was. It reminds me of that year I dug out and didn't really care about my career. I threw it in the gutter for a while and just enjoyed myself. It was fun.
A Good Year for the RosesFavourite
Elvis Costello and the Attractions
I remember when I was a a boy in Oxford. I didn't have many friends and I worked very hard and a lot of the time was spent by the river or just sort of reading or listening to music and I was getting over my first love, I suppose. And I kinda liked the song … It summed up life and it helped me get through that sort of sad patch of my life.
Which sort of was number one, the first I ever started working. All I ever heard was this one song. And it must have been played fifteen times. They flogged the song to death. They must have been on a percentage or something. They went wild.
It's one of those songs I remember being a little boy, my father used to play on a Sunday or that sort of music. And on a Sunday now, when I if I'm going off fishing, I'll put What a Wonderful World On by Louis Armstrong. It's just one of those songs which is nice to wake up.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:02When are you rude to your customers and why?
I don't believe I'm rude to my customers. I believe my customers are rude to me. … I don't like people who click fingers, I don't like people who mimic my French staff or have laughs at their expense, especially when they're working long days. They should be just left be. And what a lot of people don't realize His Enjoyment in a Restaurant is a two-way street.
Presenter asks
4:22How did you catch the food bug?
I remember when I was a young boy I was in Hurrigan and I was in the hallporter's lodge and I found this little book and it was called The Gunrunny Guide and so I started flicking through it. … And I saw the box tree, Three Stars Seek and Running. I thought … What am I doing here? … I might as well work somewhere wonderful. And so I rang them up. … And they told me to come down and I went down … And I'd never seen anything like it in my life. … And he said to one of the waiters, he said, 'Go tell Michel to bring some terrines through.' So Michel, this French cook, appeared … with these terrines on these silver salves. And I just could not believe what I was seeing. I'd never seen food look so beautiful. And so I took the job and … that's where it all started.
Presenter asks
6:18Why is your tagliatelli of oysters with caviar perfect?
It's just a wonderful concept. Even from it arriving, I mean, the way I eat it is and most people use a knife and a fork, but I don't. I mean, you just pick it up with your hands. It's incredibly sensuous. And then when you get try to get your mouth round the shell and you just you get all these textures and flavours in your mouth, it's just wonderful. It just sort of sends you to ecstasy. It's great.
The keepsakes
The book
Fenam Poin
It's not really a recipe book, it's got recipes in it, but it doesn't say the recipes aren't announces, it sort of says take one chicken and roast it and add some th some vinegar and add some of this and it's just very simple. It's like a miniature history book of this man's life and the philosophies are quite incredible. They really are incredible.
The luxury
Well, since you deprived me of my fishing rod, I had to choose a picture of my daughter. That's all.
Presenter asks
16:44How did you persuade Albert Roux to take you on?
I didn't persuade him. … I'd missed my train back to Yorkshire, so I had to walk the streets of London. … and I came across the Gavroche. … And so I knocked on the door at nine o'clock in the morning, and this young man told me to go to Wandsworth Road … I had to walk so I was really wrecked. So I walked there and I walked into the office. There was Albert Roux sitting there. … And he said, 'Can I help you?' And I said, 'Well, I've come for a job.' … He read my reference and he said, 'You worked at the box chair.' I said, 'Yes.' He said, 'How long were you there?' I said, 'A year.' He said, 'Have you got digs in London?' I said, 'No. I'm only down for today.' And he turned around and said, 'Right, come down on Monday, we'll find you digs and you start work on Tuesday.' … It's it's it is really like a fairy tale.
Presenter asks
19:36You opened your own restaurant in 1987 but lost two stones and fifty thousand pounds despite being full. What went wrong?
I gave too much away. I never even even to this day I've never d costed a dish, I've never priced a dish, I've never looked at the price of anything. The only difference is in those days I had to cut into the market, so I cut into the market with incredibly cheap prices. And for whatever reasons I got a mountain of publicity. … It came about me as a person … My long hair and my sort of nightly habits and things like this. … Then I got my Michelin star so therefore. Michelin stars justify prices.
Presenter asks
23:52What do you say to people who find talk of passion and love about food an affectation?
You must respect them. You know, not everybody in life [has] been given the opportunity I've been given … I remember one day two kids walked into my restaurant about 18 years old. … They said they'd like to have a party here. … 'We're getting married and we've been to the two restaurants up the street, one's at Winebar and one's a Brasserie and they've refused us.' … I said, 'How much are you wanting to spend?' They said fifteen pounds a head. … They said, 'We want pâté, chicken Kiev and a chocolate cake.' … And so they had that chicken Kiev. They had it today. They did. They loved it. … I gave them a memory.
“I expect results and if somebody makes a mistake in my establishment then I do shout at them. Because at the end of the day, it's my name above the door, and if the customer writes a letter of complaint, then it's to me and not to the young person concerned.”
“They [the teachers] made comments, like I remember my headmaster on my last night at school said, 'White, you'll be nothing in life.' He's absolutely right, just because I've achieved two mission stars, just because I've achieved and I've made money and I've got my business and I earn mostly fifteen times the amount he'll earn in a year. That doesn't mean I'm something special.”
“I can take a boy from a council house and I love it. … six months later you see this boy, you see how his hands are disciplined, you see how his mind's working, you see how he cares, you see how he tastes things, you see how he's conscientious about a thumbprint on a plate. That's when you can bring that out of a person who's been suppressed all his life, that's called achievement.”
“[The kitchen] really does destroy you. It does destroy you. And like I'm twenty nine now and I did six days a week, a hundred hours a week for sort of three and a half years. And I never thought I would say that it got the better of me, but I've got to be humble and I've got to say it did beat me.”
“All I wanted then was my mother to be with me. But she couldn't. … And so Harvest became the monument for my mother.”