Marco Pierre White (MPW) returned to the small screen earlier this week, with the first episode of his four-part TV series Marco's Great British Feast. The show features the man on a trip around Britain in search of the country's three finest dishes, which he plans to cook for a group of 200 diners in the final episode.
Unsurprisingly, MPW's well-publicised reputation as the ultimate enfant terrible of the culinary world played a big part in the show and many TV critics didn't respond well to his egocentric way of presenting. Here's a round up of what some of them had to say about the show.
The Metro's Keith Watson, calls MPW a "grumpy, chippy-shouldered" TV host and finds "nothing wildly original" in his show. However, he praises his "bitter egocentricity" as "cut above the cookery competition".
Thomas Sutcliffe of the Independent finds MPW's "belligerent self-regard" infuriating. "We're not very far into Marco's Great British Feast and already I'm simmering away like a pint of double cream on the back burner," he says.
Lucy Managan, who writes for the Guardian, says: "Marco projects the warmth of a barracuda and doesn't seem to do humour. You'd mistake him for a rogue assassin if he didn't have such sad eyes."
The Times's critic, Tim Teeman, doesn't make much of MPW's appearance. "He seemed tired and barely coherent, unsurprising as his round-UK odyssey seemed sort of pointless," he says.
The Daily Mirror calls Marco's Great British Feast an "ego-trip around Britain". "Despite his boasts that he's after real input from real people, Marco doesn't respond well to criticism," the paper adds.
Only the Daily Telegraph's Matt Warman seems to have kind words to say about MPW's presenting abilities calling him a "wry presenter, always serious but quirky, too". "In the end the programme makes the chef's fiery, blood and guts approach all the more appealing," he says.
It's probably a good time to question the point behind celebrity chef TV shows such as Gordon Ramsay's F Word, Heston Blumenthal's In Search of Perfection and Marco's latest adventure.
Do these programmes really help to promote the hospitality industry, good cooking and the use of seasonal British produce? Or are they just ego trips designed to give the stars of the show a platform on which to publicly explore their egocentricity? Let us know.
Comments (2)
Re MPW Great British Feast - being a humble country inn and resaurant owner, I tend to watch cookery programs to pick up tips for future trends, 'new' ingredients etc. to pass on to my team of young chefs. I will not be watching MPW again. The dishes he produced were not worthy of the program's title. He takes minimalism to new heights - cream and stock cubes for a sauce for fish pie, rabbit boiled in chicken stock and not much else, pork belly covered in reduced honey. Did he really say that he used to use stock cubes in his restaurants for seasoning? As the program is being sponsored by that stock cube company, I would like to know how he will introduce stock cubes to the dessert selection.
He used neither background flavours nor imagination, no wonder the food critics were not impressed. His contempt of his customers (at one point he said 'they are not paying let them wait') and the fact that he prefered the opinion of a young girl (a friend of his?) to that of a food critic shows an arrogance which seems to predominate in our profession. What gives these prima donnas the right to act like this? He was not worthy of the respect the producers paid to him.
There are thousands of pubs and restaurants like us all over the country who are truly sourcing locally and have been doing so for five or six years, and are shunning fois gras and the like. We do not need people like MPW to show us the way. This journey has been done in a much better way by others in the past.
Posted by Mrs E Gresko | July 7, 2008 5:08 PM
Posted on July 7, 2008 17:08
Thanks so much for your comment.
MPW clearly continues to divide opinions. What does everyone else think?
Posted by Kerstin Kuhn | July 8, 2008 3:24 PM
Posted on July 8, 2008 15:24