‘In some ways the restaurant has changed a lot over that time, but in others it has remained the same. ‘I’ve been involved with Le Gavroche in some sense for forty-odd years now,’ he says.
Michel has been at the helm of the restaurant ever since. In 1987 he returned to Le Gavroche full-time, officially taking on the head chef role in 1991. Stints at The Waterside Inn and Le Gavroche followed, before Michel took on the Roux’s catering business and managed the business for three years. French military service followed, then after a few more months working at restaurants across Paris, he returned to the UK and joined the Roux fold permanently. He then worked with his father and uncle at Le Gavroche for a season, before returning to France to train under Alain Chapel at a restaurant called Mionnay. This upbringing meant Michel didn’t ever consider becoming anything else than a chef, and when he turned sixteen he set off for France to begin an apprenticeship in a pastry shop with a master pâtissier named Monsieur Hellegouarche. He would make it in a wooden pail with crushed ice and salt, with an iron cylinder inside and wooden paddles so you could churn the ice cream by hand.’ ‘My earliest memory was when I was probably about six and making vanilla ice cream with my father. This, of course, meant Michel’s early years were filled with memories of food. Growing up, Michel was given pots, pans and little pieces of pastry (‘instead of plasticine’) to play with, while his parents cooked. There was no time off or nannies or anything like that – they just went straight back to work.’ She was rushed to hospital, I popped out, and the very next day all three of us were back in the kitchen. My mum was there as a kitchen helper, as it was only the two of them in the kitchen, and she went into labour whilst working. ‘It was a huge estate, with a very Downton Abbey, Upstairs Downstairs type of house. ‘My father was working as a private chef in Kent, cooking for the Queen Mother’s horse trainers, when I was born,’ he explains. It seems as though Michel was always destined to become a chef not only was it in his blood, but he has been in kitchens since the day he was born – literally.
Part of the Roux family, a dynasty which has had a hugely profound impact on the UK’s food scene, he has continued the work of his father Albert Roux and late, great uncle Michel, maintaining Le Gavroche’s reputation for being a bastion of classical French cookery in the capital. He’s still hard at work behind the pass at Le Gavroche, one of the most famous restaurants in the UK. Many of us know Michel Roux Jr from his TV appearances over the years – MasterChef: The Professionals, Saturday Kitchen, Food and Drink – but he is by no means a ‘TV chef’.
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