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Description: A classic MPW-French operation decorated in subdued nightclubby style, rather unpromisingly located by the entrance to Chelsea FC; the style of the operation is arguably a little passé, but the food is of high quality.
Food: 
Service: 
Ambience: 
Phone: 020 7915 2929
Website: http://www.marcorestaurant.co.uk
Open: Dinner: Tuesday - Saturday 6-10:30pm. As from the 15th September 2008 we will be closed for lunch. We will open for lunch if you wish to book a large group or function. Please contact us for more information.
Dress code: Smart casual
Good for: Good food, Ambience.
Payment options: All major cards except Diners
Maturing nicely: Marco with his chefs Matthew Brown (left) and Roger Pizey
Football food: On matchdays blokey dishes are on the menu
When Marco Pierre White discovered that being awarded three Michelin stars didn't bring happiness or - as shrinks might say - closure, and in 1999 relinquished the stars and abandoned the stoves, I remember hoping that he would turn to some form of teaching. To hear Marco lovingly describe ingredients and their potential always made me itch to cook, or anyway eat.
The fact that he fishes, shoots and stalks may well reflect a childhood when he went poaching in the grounds of a stately home near the Leeds council estate where he lived, or a need for solitude, or a Rambo aspect to his personality, but it also puts him in an intimate relationship with foodstuffs, a particular empathy that could be tasted in the food he prepared.
Since leaving The Oak Room of The Meridien Hotel, Marco has done many things - including opening a chain of pizza restaurants with the jockey Frankie Dettori - but the closest to anything pedagogical has been his recent appearance on Hell's Kitchen. Having loudly derided TV chefs he became one, but Consistency is not his middle name. It is the more unlikely Pierre.
When I interviewed Marco at his restaurant, Harvey's, 15 years ago - at his two-star stage - he claimed, at the age of 30, to have grown up. One of the proofs he offered was that he had endured a broken love affair and his subsequent girlfriend was the same age as him. In terms of romantic life he has been slowly growing up in public ever since, but evidence of maturity was certainly there on the box.
Even if his decision to be avuncular, godfatherly, a Samurai Tommy Cooper - call it what you will - was a deliberate riposte to the sweary, boot-camp meanness of Gordon Ramsay, to the viewer the façade never cracked.
Some of his comments were like a headmaster's school report: "Barry has moved on in leaps and bounds. Most importantly, he's enjoying cooking." Others were faintly ominous: "I am here to dissolve your fears."
We never saw enough of the man actually preparing dishes but in a couple of weeks he turned Adele Silva from someone without a clue in the kitchen into a competent cook and organiser.
So has Marco sensibly decided to open a cookery school? No. He has opened another restaurant, this time in league with Roman Abramovich. The restaurant Marco - named after his younger son - is located at Stamford Bridge. If talk of father Marco's valiant cooking of yesteryear and his reputation as perhaps the most gifted British chef of modern times has made you wish you had been there when he was still trucking, then a visit to Marco - where head chef is Matthew Brown, who has worked with MPW for 16 years - gives you the flavour.
"He's the only chef I know," said my husband Reg, a fellow Yorkshireman, "where I can recognise his signature on dishes." This is certainly true of parfait de foie gras en gelée de truffe; braised pig's trotter aux morilles avec pomme mousseline; Bresse pigeon with foie gras wrapped in cabbage; escalope of salmon, croquant of fennel, sauce Bois Boudrin (Roux brothers ketchup); lemon tart; and, to some extent, oysters with watercress in Champagne jelly.
These and more are available on the evening menu. On matchdays there are blokey dishes like deep-fried haddock, chips and mushy peas, oxtail and kidney pudding, roasted partridge with braised cabbage, sherry trifle.
The oysters were not quite the perfection of Marco's own tagliatelle of oysters with caviar, but even he could only prepare a limited number each night of that creation. The pig's trotter, a mahogany log by Salvador Dali, was exquisite. Also excellent were soup of red mullet Rochellaise presented like a bouillabaisse with croutons, grated cheese and rouille and the cabbagewrapped Bresse pigeon cooked to just the right shade of pink.
As if to underline a moment in culinary history, the décor at Marco has unrepentant Eighties shimmering glitz and glam. "Don't you like that private corner where you sat?" said Marco, who was surveying the scene. "You could seduce someone there. Or", he added pensively, "you could have a row."
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
Will Marco be an absentee head chef, like Gordon et al, or will he a ubiquitous chef in the kitchen? Nowadays, when you go out in London, you are eating second rate food cooked not by the chef/patron, but by a brigade of less talented chefs. At least in the ethnic restaurants, you always get food prepared by the maestro. They seldom use those PR food gurus to make false claims about their food. Marco should stick with his TV programmes.
- Philippa, London
