Playing by his own roux

Ever since Michel Roux followed his brother Albert to London to open Le Gavroche or "street urchin" restaurant in 1967—it later became the first three Michelin starred restaurant in Britain—the French-born chef and restaurateur has worked on 14 different cookery programmes, written over 22 recipe books in the past 30 years and has been inducted into several French orders including the Legion of Honour in 2004. But to get a sense of the culinary clout and influence of the Roux Brothers, you’d only need to see how Heston Blumenthal, the English chef owner of the three-Michelin-starred The Fat Duck, likens the duo to the British rock sensation: The Beatles. The Beatles changed the face of rock and roll music, and in the same way, that’s what Albert Roux and Michel Roux did for the U.K. dining scene.

The legacy began in France above a charcuterie in Semur-en-Brionnais, Burgundy, where Albert and Michel were born into a long line of butchers. Michel credits his mother for his love for food and cooking, and by the age of 14 he decided he wanted to become a chef. “I still have the schoolbook in which I wrote that I wanted to open a restaurant with my brother, Albert, who was already training to be a chef,” Michel remembers. Under the tutelage of Monsieur Loyal in Paris, he started his training in pastry, beginning each day at 4am, six days a week where he picked up lessons on discipline, diligence and dedication in addition to techniques for kneading dough. Pastry is still very close his heart, “you can bestow much pleasure with a few basic ingredients of eggs, flour and sugar,” Michel shares.

Excerpt from the January issue of epicure