_Private View 2019: Michel Roux Jr on building a legacy in haute cuisine

Below is an excerpt of an interview with Michelin-starred chef Michel Roux Jr in Private View, 2019 Knight Frank’s definitive guide to luxury property and lifestyle in the UK and beyond. In the interview he talks about the family’s continuing legacy in the restaurant business. Read the full version in Private View, 2019 on p36.

It is 9:30 in the morning and Le Gavroche in Mayfair is preparing for lunchtime service. The décor is traditional, plush green velvet meets mahogany wood. In the private dining room the chef and patron Michel Roux Jr is leafing through a book in which he designs his new dishes, as an artist would structure a painting.

A screen at the end of the chef ’s table shows the activity inside the kitchen – which occasionally and naturally catches the nimble 59-year-old’s eye – but during service this is also a bonus for diners at the chef ’s table to see ‘backstage’. Michel is immediately likeable, greets all his kitchen team by name as they trickle in – what you get as the TV-presenting natural is what you get in real life.

But he also happens to have two Michelin stars and is as talented as the name Roux would suggest. It’s not hyperbole to state that in the ’60s, the Roux brothers – Albert and uncle Michel, “I tagged on the Jr because there was so much confusion” – were as synonymous with modernising the British food scene as Terence Conran was with contemporising design, Vidal Sassoon with hair styling and Mary Quant with revolutionising fashion.

Michel Jr grew up watching his parents cook. “My first food memory was making ice cream with Dad when I was five or six, churning it by hand in a pail over ice. Bloody hard work.

“I always knew I wanted to be a chef. I left school at 16 and went straight into an apprenticeship in France,” firstly at Pâtisserie Hellegouarche in Paris from 1976 to 1979, and then commis de cuisine at Alain Chapel’s eponymous restaurant near Lyon – a chef who he describes as his biggest influence.

Roux Jr identifies that much of his current success has been built on his family’s name, but it is he who has elevated it to become one of the most recognisable brands in the world of fine dining. This doesn’t come without its challenges, however, as Roux believes he has always had to strike a balance between his own creative instincts and preserving family tradition. “It’s also a burden because you have certain parameters and although you can evolve the food, to wholly change it would alienate the loyal customers. And they mean so much to me, while this place means so much to many.”

And as a global brand, Roux Jr has had to develop an intimate understanding of how the business side of running restaurants works. This is something Michel Jr has passed on to his daughter Emily Roux, whose own restaurant specialises in French and Italian cuisine, carries on the family tradition.

Her father beams when he talks about her. “I’ve got many awards and it’s humbling to be recognised, but for me, my biggest achievement is to see my daughter do so well.”

Are family run restaurants still something that can thrive? “I think that the independent restaurants are still strong and valid and definitely valuable, but the government should be more helpful and champion them, business rates are crippling for example.” Roux Jr makes a valid point and speaks to his empathetic nature; despite high-street homogeny defining tastes over the past decade, he understands it’s still a people business and an art form to respect in its own right.