It is with a heavy heart that I read of the passing of Chef Michel Roux of the famous Roux Brothers restaurant empire. Chef Michel was 78. I met Michel and spent time in his Waterside Inn kitchen in 1978-1981 while I was training at Le Gavroche in London with his brother, chef Albert Roux. He was a chef's chef, a great businessman and a culinary icon that help revolutionize fine dining in Great Britain. His skill as a pastry chef was legendary. His collection of cookbooks that he authored is a gift to any serious culinarian.
At one point in 1981, I met up with Chef Michel at the Pierre Hotel in New York. We were meeting with the Four Seasons Hotel group with the idea of opening a fine dining restaurant in the Hotel Pierre. We had the grand tour of all the best vendors in the city and made a trip to Montreal, Canada to meet with Mr. Sharp, head of the Four Seasons Hotels. We designed the kitchen in a matter of hours and Michel negotiated the terms of the business deal. Unfortunately, the project did not move forward due to a recession the occurred at that time.
Chef Michael will be greatly missed and it is a great loss to the food world.
Chef Michael Hutchings
From Wikipedia
Michel Roux, OBE ([mi.ʃɛl ʁu]; 19 April 1941 – 11 March 2020), also known as Michel Roux Snr., was a French chef and restaurateur working in Britain. Along with his brother Albert, he opened Le Gavroche, later to become the first three Michelin starred restaurant in Britain, and The Waterside Inn, which was the first restaurant outside France to hold three stars for 25 years.
Roux followed his brother into becoming a pastry chef, and again to England in order to open their first restaurant. Together they have been described as the "godfathers of modern restaurant cuisine in the UK", and Roux was inducted into several French orders and received two-lifetime achievement awards from different publications. He was decorated during a period of National Service for France during the 1960s.
He founded the Roux Brothers Scholarship along with Albert in 1984 and worked as a consultant for companies such as British Airways and Celebrity Cruises over the years. After he and his brother split the business in 1986, Roux took the Waterside Inn, which he handed over to his son, Alain, in 2002. He remained an active food writer and appeared on television shows such as Saturday Kitchen, MasterChef and the Roux family-centric series The Roux Legacy, and on the Woman's Hour program on BBC Radio 4.[1]
