The time has come for me to speak a little about the Roux brothers. Albert and Michel. Two legendary French born chefs and restaurateurs who have spent the last fifty years positively influencing cooking and restaurants in the UK like no others before or since. They have an incomparable status in the hospitality industry and are considered to be instrumental in changing the face of British cooking and cuisine in a time when our food offering was as bad as a rotting mattress.
I first learned about them when I entered the industry in 2006, all naive and without much knowledge of who the big-wigs were but I slowly learned about key figures and how their influence had shaped modern gastronomy. I knew of course about Gordon Ramsay, because he was ubiquitous at the time with his Mr Shouty persona and TV presence and also of Heston Blumenthal with his snail porridge and egg and bacon ice-cream, but I knew little else of the chefy world. So as I read and studied and discovered Marco's story, it naturally lead me to the Roux brothers and then the industry started to make sense. The puzzle started to be put together and I began to see where it had begun.
Back in 1967, Albert and Michel Roux opened Le Gavroche at 61 Lower Sloane Street, London and in 1974 went on to be the first restaurant in the UK to win a coveted Michelin star. They followed this by progressing to winning two Michelin stars in 1977 after a move to 43 Upper Brook Street in Mayfair, again the first UK restaurant to do so. Le Gavroche then went on to win its third Michelin star in 1982, the highest possible rating in the publication and a ground-breaking achievement. It still has two shiny Michelin stars today and is under the guidance of Albert’s son, Michel Roux Jr.
In 1972, the Roux brothers opened The Waterside Inn, in Bray, Berkshire and went on to also achieve three Michelin stars and in time be the first restaurant outside of France to hold Michelin's highest honour of three stars for 25 years. To this day the Waterside Inn has held this accolade for an amazing 33 years and is currently under the control of Michel’s son, Alain who joined in 1992.
Le Gavroche and The Waterside Inn are the jewels in the crown of the Roux brother’s restaurant empire and continue to this day to set an example for others to follow. Further to this they have been the kitchens where so many chefs who have gone on to great success have cut their teeth and are like a who's who of British cooking over the last twenty or thirty years. Gordon Ramsay. Marco. Marcus Wareing. Simon Gueller. Pierre Koffman. Bryn Williams. Monica Galetti. And the list goes on. It matters little that their sons are now running the kitchens in these restaurants because they are simply carrying the baton, albeit quite a heavy one, and it will always be their father's spirit which is felt at the stoves and in the dining rooms.
So they're a couple of smarty pants then? Well yes they are really and it doesn’t stop at restaurants. The eighties saw them have a successful TV series which can be found on YouTube. Not only can you learn a great deal about many ingredients, techniques and cooking methods, you can also see the sparks fly between the two brothers who have an obvious fierce rivalry. It's actually quite painful at times watching how they are together but by the same token really quite amusing. These programmes are still a great resource for anyone interested not only in cookery programmes but also how to cook properly. Their books are also a great resource and cover everything from patisserie to sauces.
So, in addition to an impressive restaurant empire, TV series and various books, they also ran a successful catering business which was bought by Compass Group in the nineties. And it doesn’t stop here either. The Roux brothers have another impressive bullet point stamped firmly their already impressive joint resume and that is the highly regarded and respected Roux Scholarship. Started in 1984, the Roux scholarship was a competition in which young, up and coming chefs could compete for the opportunity to work in any three Michelin starred restaurant of their choice, anywhere in the world for three months. Now regarded as the premier way to get a lift in the industry, the Roux scholarship has given some now very successful chefs an important and arguably career defining leg-up. Past winners include Sat Baines (two stars), Andrew Fairlie (two stars) and Simon Hulstone (one star), who not only run celebrated restaurants but are great ambassadors for the industry. The Roux scholarship has without doubt, had an important and positive impact on the industry over the years and will continue to produce chefs who go on to achieve success and pave the way for others to follow.
Albert and Michel Roux are legends. Ask any chef working in the industry today and ninety nine percent will have something to say about them because their influence is so widespread. These two men have created a legacy which will live on and can be compared to no other in the UK. Having Le Gavroche or The waterside Inn on your CV is a sign of quality. It means you will be taken seriously as a chef. It means you have been trained and you have been trained properly. It means you have been a part of the golden age of British gastronomy and something to be proud of. Their current chef patrons, who are outstanding chefs in their own right, have a great deal of influence in the industry but their fathers are the real drivers behind it. They are the visionaries who started it all and their search for perfection will live on in the decades to come and long after they have departed.