This Christmas will be the first Marcus Wareing will actually spend with his family – after hanging up his professional apron and announcing that he has no plans to return to the kitchen.
The 54-year-old closed his Michelin starred-restaurant Marcus, at The Berkeley hotel, London at the end of 2023 and another restaurant The Gilbert Scott in 2021, marking nearly 40 years in the business.
“This is the first Christmas since I’ve been with [my wife] Jane, that I’ve not ever been involved in any kitchen or restaurant whatsoever, since day dot really. So I’m actually really looking forward to it,” says Wareing, a judge on BBC’s MasterChef: The Professionals. “Normally I’m at work Christmas Day, and we’d eat at about six or seven o’clock when I got back.”
His three children Jake, Archie and Jessie are in their teens and 20s now but, “when the kids were little, we’d get up, open presents, have breakfast and I’d leave at 11 o’clock in the morning. I think it was really important for me to be present on a day that is a celebration for a lot of people. And to ask people to work, I think it’s only right that you show your face”.
But he looks back at Christmasses spent in the kitchen fondly. “When I was training at The Savoy and other big London restaurants, I just remember how much fun it was at Christmas because everyone was in a good mood. The customers were all dressing up, the kitchen was vibrant. It was hard work but you just got your head down.”
And when he opened his own restaurants, Wareing – who has just released his latest cookbook Marcus’s France – says he always gave the kitchen staff champagne to sip through their Christmas Day shift and closed after the lunch service so everyone could go home to their loved ones.
“I remember walking in one day, Jake was a little lad, and he had no clue that I had been missing for about six or seven hours. He said, ‘Why are you chef jacket? [He had been] heavily involved in his toys and telly and chocolate.”
So does he feel like he missed out on special family time?
“No,” says the acclaimed chef. “You don’t go into cookery, at any top level, and worry ‘am I missing out on anything?’ – never in a million years.
“I was cooking Christmas lunches and doing New Year way before I met Jane and had a family. I’ve done it since I was a chef. There was always bigger benefits afterwards. At the end of the day, it’s just another day.”
As he’ll be home this year, Wareing is planning to do the festive feast himself. “I’ll probably take charge of that, because I love cooking. I can cook much better than all the family put together.”
And just because he’s no longer working in professional kitchens, it doesn’t mean his standards have slipped.
“Cooking, for me, is a way of life, no matter where I am. If I’m eating food in someone’s restaurant, in someone’s home, or my home, or your home, I will judge it as food and how it’s cooked.
“I will look at it and analyse it, see what’s missing. As a cook, I can’t be a professional in one kitchen and then be a slob in an amateur. It doesn’t work that way.
“I chop, I fry, I season, I do everything exactly the same. I may not go into the amount of detail in the food at home.”
Growing up with a top chef in the house, “My three kids, who have been to lots of people’s houses, lots of different places and holidays, they always refer back to [say] the food at home is on a different level.
“A lot of people don’t know how to cook,” adds Wareing. “And I think that’s a shame and sad. I think there’s also people who can’t be bothered to make an effort.”
No surprise then that his children were taught to make a roux (a mixture of flour and fat used to thicken sauces in French cooking) when they were young. Although, “I’ve walked into kitchen at home on many occasions and it’s a f**king bomb site. My daughter will make a cake and you’d think she just made a cake for a banquet rather than just four or six people. If you’re in a professional kitchen you’d get hauled into the chef’s office!”
Like many top chefs, Wareing first learned his trade through classic French recipes and techniques at catering college. In the highest echelons of top gastronomy, French food is still often considered the height of sophistication and you’ll hear many chefs on MasterChef:The Professionals tout their training in the French classics.
Wareing’s second job was at the three Michelin-starred Le Gavroche, a beacon of French cuisine in London run by the Roux family and where he first met Gordon Ramsay – who would later be best man at his wedding, head stag-do organiser and business partner, before a famous falling out during a legal battle over the name of a restaurant they set up together.
“There’s a lot of water under the bridge now,” Wareing shares, “I wouldn’t say [we’re] friends.” But it was Ramsay who sent him to train in Paris for a year and he’s spent many family holidays in Provence (“the garden of France”).
The new book then, is his “journey through French food” and what it’s meant to him throughout an illustrious career. It includes many classics – think confit de canard and lobster thermidor – as well as crowd-pleasers like brie-topped burger with mustard mayonnaise and grilled potato wedges and banana split crêpes.
French cuisine isn’t all cream and butter though. “The traditional dishes do warrant those that level of richness, but I think what we’ve learned is to be able to pare it back and to use it wisely and marginally,” says Wareing. “I don’t think our gut, our stomachs, can take that level of richness anymore.”
Plus, he’s health conscious too. “I’ve always been like that. I don’t like cutting things out, I don’t like diets, I just don’t put more food on my plate than most people.”
‘Marcus’s France’ by Marcus Wareing (Harper NonFiction, £22).
