Marcus Wareing 'inspired' by watching stars at work in his London kitchen

Marcus Wareing says that working with Hollywood’s A-list has made him a better chef.

Michelin-starred Wareing was a consultant on a new Harvey Weinstein movie starring Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller which finished shooting in London last week.

Cooper plays a head chef striving for perfection in the film, provisionally titled Adam Jones, and Miller is his sous chef.

The pair were given lessons at Marcus — Wareing’s restaurant at the Berkeley hotel in Knightsbridge — before filming began.

He said: “They both ate at the chef’s table to watch the kitchen. Sienna was the one who was doing a lot more cooking. She had to learn skills like filleting and butchering, whereas Bradley was playing the head chef role on the pass. The skill of Bradley as an actor was incredible, his attention in watching what I’d do, watching what I said, then just doing it. I was like, wow — I’ve been trying to get chefs to do that for years.

“Would I employ them in my own kitchen? God, yeah. They go into a project and they embrace it fully — whether or not they’d ever want to be chefs I don’t know. I doubt it, they are on the world stage in their acting careers.”

But Wareing, 44, said that his biggest lessons came from the film’s director, John Wells.

“Watching him direct hundreds of people with calm precision, accuracy and with respectful conversation was extraordinary,” he said.

“It’s shown me a way of approaching how to communicate with your team. Being on a Hollywood movie, the level of artistic skill they bring to a movie is incredible. It’s inspiring, fantastic.” He also revealed that the kitchen built at Ealing Studios for the film, which also stars Uma Thurman and Emma Thompson, was even better than his restaurant’s.

“I would’ve picked that kitchen up and put it anywhere — it was amazing,” he said. “It was the real deal — you could’ve served a restaurant out of it.”