Tough Cookies: Tales of Obsession, Toil and Tenacity from Britain's Kitchen Heavyweights
by Simon Wright
Profile Books £16.99, pp198
It takes a lot less effort to eat a good meal than to cook one. This is a statement of the bleeding obvious, but for those of us who somehow manage to earn a living sitting on our arses, filling our bellies, it is a truism that, increasingly, becomes the spectre at the feast. The longer we do 'the job', the more we are drawn back to the engine room of the restaurant, the kitchen, to see for ourselves the ludicrous efforts made for us by brigades of obsessive chefs. It is one thing to make greed look like a profession; quite another to pretend our pleasure is not achieved through somebody else's pain.
Simon Wright used to fill his belly as editor of the AA's restaurant guide, a job he quit after claiming the company's boss tried to interfere with one of the grades he was awarding. In many ways, he admits it was a relief. He has run restaurants, knows how tough it is and didn't always feel comfortable playing the critic. Tough Cookies, a set of biographies of four of Britain's leading chefs, feels at times like his attempt to make amends.
It is, for the most part, very successful. Anthony Bourdain aside, there are very few chefs who have been able to describe the whole, febrile, sweaty, painful business, so the literature has been limited. The restaurant-going public has been left to glean what it can about the industry from the froth of TV celebrity chefdom, which is like trying to work out a recipe by foraging through the leftovers. On TV and in the press, being a chef has come to look all mercurial inspiration, passion and drama. In reality, it is hard and often boring.
Reading here about Gordon Ramsay working such long hours at Marco Pierre White's restaurant, Harvey's, that he would sleep in the dining room rather than bother going home, or about Heston Blumenthal, of the Fat Duck in Berkshire, being so tired he would fall asleep standing up, you cannot help but wonder why they do it. Happily, by taking us from the very first spark of interest, Wright does a good job of explaining why. Critics will complain that he is simply buying into the macho cliches these cooks like to use about themselves; as ever, clichés exist because they resonate with truth. Having spent time in a number of kitchens, it's clear he has captured the authentic stench of the top flight kitchen, be it of sweat, blood or veal jus.
The most intriguing story belongs to Shaun Hill, who, until recently, cooked at his own restaurant, the Merchant House in Ludlow, Shropshire. Hill started in the Fifties, long before the others here were even born, and remembers the days of clumsy, bowdlerised classics which were the stock-in-trade of the British restaurant kitchen.
He learnt his craft at Robert Carrier's restaurant, cooked at the Gay Hussar, and then became one of those who, in the Eighties at Gidleigh Park in Devon, inspired the unfinished revolution in British gastronomy. Not that he planned to be a revolutionary. 'How I work is that I do it while I really enjoy it,' Hill says, 'And when I stop enjoying it, I decide it's time to move on.' Britain's restaurants have been the better for it.
Tough Cookies is not without faults. Wright can gush at times and fails to challenge his subjects where challenges need to be made. There is, for example, much about Marcus Wareing achieving his first Michelin star at the age of 25, but nothing about his well-known frustration at not having received a second. There is a short reference to Gordon Ramsay branching out into television and running multiple restaurants, but nothing about whether all those commitments challenge his ability to stay at the top of the game.
Then again, this is a book more about journeys than destinations. Even if it is slightly over-garnished at times it's still a delicious tale.
