To millions of television viewers, Marcus Wareing is the exacting, occasionally steely presence on the judging panel of MasterChef: The Professionals, a role he has held since 2014. To anyone who ate out seriously in London over the past quarter of a century, he is something more: the chef behind Pétrus, the Savoy Grill, Marcus at The Berkeley and The Gilbert Scott, a man whose cooking collected Michelin stars with a regularity that most of his peers could only envy.
Earlier this year he added another honour to that list, when he was appointed MBE in the 2026 New Year Honours for services to the culinary arts and to broadcasting. It is a fitting moment, then, to talk about the cuisine that underpins everything he has ever cooked.
Marcus’s France (HarperCollins, £26) is part recipe book, part memoir. It contains a generous spread of dishes, from simple suppers such as pork chops with green olive sauce to the great set pieces of coq au vin and beef bourguignon, but it also follows the path of a Southport-born cook who arrived at the Savoy as a teenager in 1988 and never really stopped learning from the French.
A cuisine with roots
I began by asking what it is about French food that has held his attention for so long. His answer is typically direct.
“I think it’s a cuisine with roots, with authenticity, and it’s a cuisine that I have been cooking all my professional life. I think it’s the basis of many foods in this country. Of course, France also has the most wonderful ingredients, produce and wine!”
That phrase, the basis of many foods in this country, is worth pausing on. For a generation of British chefs who came up in the 1980s and 1990s, French technique was not one option among many. It was the curriculum. Stocks, sauces, pastry, butchery and the brigade system itself all arrived via France, and the country’s great restaurants were the standard against which everything else was measured.
Wareing’s own training bears that out.
“Well, it’s all I was taught, so everything I do now is based on that, from a roux sauce to the prep of a fish, everything. My college exams were all based on French cuisine. Over the years I have adapted the way I serve or present things, or the ingredients I use, but ultimately the basics are French. We may use technology to adapt the way we cook, but the basis for me is French.”
Lessons from the masters
After the Savoy, under Anton Edelmann, came a spell at Le Gavroche with Albert Roux, the man who, with his brother Michel, did more than anyone to bring French fine dining to Britain. From there Wareing went to Paris to work for Guy Savoy, whose eponymous restaurant has long been one of the most admired in France.
What did those mentors teach him?
“They showed me the level of professional discipline required in a successful kitchen. I learnt to respect everything in the kitchen: the ingredients, the cooking methods, the standards, which laid the foundations for me. Their passion for what they did just inspired the people around them. It was contagious.”
Ask him for his abiding memories of those years in the great kitchens of London, and he answers in three words: “Just hard work!”
Was there ever a moment when he thought he could not go on?
“There were times when it was tough, of course. Times when I had to sacrifice, when I had to work long hours, work Christmas, work bank holidays, work weekends. But no, I turned it into a way of life, so it wasn’t a chore.”
It is a revealing answer, and one that anyone who has spent a career on the road, in airport lounges and hotel rooms, missing birthdays and bank holidays for the job, will recognise. The trick, as Wareing puts it, is to stop seeing the sacrifice as a sacrifice.
Paris, he says, was where the theory finally met the reality.
“I saw it first-hand. The thing I had been taught for all those years, in Paris, in the heart of France. It was incredible.”
A michelin star at 25
On his return to London, Wareing became head chef at L’Oranger in St James’s, and it was there, at just 25, that he won his first Michelin star, making him one of the youngest chefs ever to do so. He would go on to earn two stars at Pétrus.
“It was completely unexpected. I wasn’t working towards it, I just wanted to do the best and offer my customers the best. What it gave me, it made me realise that my training had paid off. A Michelin star brings its own pressures, and that was difficult in its own way at 25.”
In an era when young chefs are often accused of cooking for the inspectors rather than the diners, there is something refreshing in his insistence that the star was a by-product rather than the goal. The customer came first; the recognition followed.
Wareing closed The Gilbert Scott in 2021 and his flagship, Marcus, at The Berkeley in December 2023, turning his attention to television, writing and the smallholding he runs in East Sussex. Marcus’s France is, in many ways, the distillation of all those years at the stove.
From three-star dining room to home kitchen
So how did he decide which dishes made the cut, and how has he adapted them for readers who, in all likelihood, have not spent their formative years in a Parisian brigade?
“It’s the dishes that I have the greatest memories of, ones that I have cooked many times over the years. I have taken classics and adapted them, so they are much lighter and simpler than the original. Also, a lot more practical for home. There are recipes from French homes, brasseries and even some of the top three-star restaurants, but I have adapted them for us all to cook at home.”
That does not mean the book avoids a challenge. The most technically demanding recipe, he says, is a tourte de gibier with madeira and truffle.
“It’s a very beautiful French pie, full of decadent ingredients and luxury. I cooked this in a three-star in London. My advice to someone cooking this for the first time is the same as all recipes: read all the way through first! Also, don’t do it for the first time for your special event. Practise the techniques first.”
It is sound advice, and it applies well beyond the kitchen. Nobody sensible delivers a keynote without a rehearsal.
The joy of a french market
Throughout the book, Wareing returns to the importance of fresh, high-quality ingredients. When I ask him to name his favourites, he refuses to pick just one.
“I don’t have a particular favourite, there are so many. Walking round a French market, though, you can’t help but be inspired. The fruit, including tomatoes, which have ripened in the sun, are sweet and delicious. The Pyrenean lamb and the famous French chicken, poulet de Bresse, the cured meats. Wow.”
For business travellers with a free morning in a French city, that is perhaps the single best piece of advice in this interview. Skip the hotel breakfast buffet at least once, and head to the local market instead. Whether it is the Marché d’Aligre in Paris, Les Halles in Lyon or the Saturday market in Aix-en-Provence, there are few better ways to understand a place than through what its people buy and eat.
Provence, Paris and the South
Which regions of France does he love most when it comes to food?
“The south of France and Provence is my favourite. I have worked there, holidayed there and explored the region in Simply Provence. I love Paris, but it has ingredients from every region available. Of course, I love the wine regions and the cheese!”
His BBC series Marcus Wareing Simply Provence, which aired in 2024, took viewers through the markets, vineyards and olive groves of the region, and readers planning a trip of their own will find plenty of inspiration there. Those combining a meeting on the Riviera with a few days inland could do far worse than Crillon le Brave, a hotel that lives to the rhythm of the seasons at the foot of Mont Ventoux.
Paris, meanwhile, remains the great clearing house of French produce, the place where the best of every region ends up on a plate. For a characterful base in the Marais, Le Grand Mazarin puts you within easy walking distance of some of the city’s finest bistros and food shops.
Pâtisserie and the showstopper
Wareing is unusual among chefs of his generation in having trained in pastry and bread-making as well as the savoury side of the kitchen.
“It plays a huge part, and of course overseeing a kitchen, it helps to know that section as well as every other. My favourite dessert to make is probably apple tarte tatin. It’s delicious and it’s a wonderful showstopper. Millefeuille is also a favourite.”
And the dish in the book that brings him the most joy to cook?
“It’s so hard to answer that. They all do. They all represent great memories, and they are all delicious. My favourites vary depending on the time of year and who I am cooking for. I am reminded how wonderful and simple the chicken liver parfait is. I made it recently and now it’s a regular at home. I love the cassoulet. It’s the French version of our stews, and reminds me of my upbringing in the north.”
There is something touching about that final line. For all the three-star polish, the chef from Southport still finds his way back to a slow-cooked pot of beans and sausage because it tastes of home.
A life told through food
The way the book is organised allows readers to follow Wareing’s career chronologically, and it lends the whole thing a strong autobiographical flavour. Was that deliberate?
“Well, it’s not a book of recipes, it’s a book of my life explored through food. So yes, I think it was important to explain something about my life and where my love of food came from.”
Lighter, not lesser
Not everyone is convinced that French cooking is what it used to be. Delia Smith recently suggested that it has become “very hard” to find a decent meal in France, blaming a retreat from butter and cream. Does Wareing agree?
“It’s adapting. French cuisine is adapting to the modern palate and generally becoming less rich, as the recipes in this book show. I still use butter, but on occasion use crème fraîche instead of cream, or use less. I don’t think it detracts from the dish. That’s my job, to make sure it doesn’t. So no, I don’t really agree with Delia.”
It is a diplomatic but firm rebuttal, and one that will resonate with anyone who has sat through a long business lunch in Paris and longed for something that did not require an afternoon siesta afterwards.
The meal of a lifetime
What, I ask, is the most memorable meal he has ever eaten?
“I was honoured to be invited to a celebration by Alain Ducasse at the iconic Louis XV restaurant. Chefs from all over the world were invited. It was the second time I was lucky enough to eat there. Both were fantastic, mind-blowing in fact.”
Le Louis XV – Alain Ducasse à l’Hôtel de Paris in Monte-Carlo has been one of the grandest dining rooms in Europe since Ducasse took it over in 1987, and remains a pilgrimage for anyone who takes Mediterranean cooking seriously. For executives in Monaco for the Grand Prix, the yacht show or one of the principality’s many conferences, it is the ultimate client dinner.
And his last meal? The answer is not what you might expect from a chef steeped in French haute cuisine.
“I think I’d want my dad to cook it for me: a cup of tea served with his full English cooked breakfast. Not very French, but it can’t be beaten.”
What readers will take away
Finally, what does he hope people will gain from Marcus’s France?
“I hope they gain the ability to cook some of the most iconic French dishes. I hope they gain a new appreciation for them, and realise they can be lighter and simpler than expected and hugely rewarding.”
It is a modest ambition from a chef who has achieved almost everything his profession has to offer. But then, as Wareing has shown throughout a 40-year career, the fundamentals always matter most. Read the recipe all the way through. Respect the ingredients. Practise before the big night. And never underestimate a good tarte tatin.
For those who would rather leave the cooking to the professionals when in town, our guide to the best business restaurants in London is a good place to start.
Marcus’s France: Delicious French recipes, from my kitchen to yours by Marcus Wareing
Published by HarperCollins, hardback, 256 pages, £26
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