In the gastronomic desert represented by London and Great Britain at the end of the 1960s, the brothers Albert and Michel Roux triumphed by imposing the standards of French haute cuisine in restaurants such as Le Gavroche, in London, or the Waterside Inn, in Bray-on-Thames (Berkshire). First three Michelin star chef (in 1982) in the United Kingdom, prolific businessman, essential trainer of a whole generation of British cooks, Albert Roux, the eldest of the siblings, died in London on January 4 in the age of 85, less than a year after his brother Michel. International and media figure in contemporary English cuisine, chef Gordon Ramsay has described “Legend” his former master, “The man who brought gastronomy to Great Britain”.
On October 8, 1935, Albert Roux was born in Semur-en-Brionnais (Saône-et-Loire), in the south of Burgundy, into a family of pork butchers for three generations. Marked by their sense of a job well done and a taste for goodness, it is nevertheless in pastry making that the young man (like his brother Michel later, future Meilleur Ouvrier de France) apprenticed.
Luxury and gluttony combined
After three years of military service in Algeria, Albert Roux set sail for Great Britain, to work first in the service of private residences and families of the English aristocracy, in particular for Lady Nancy Astor, then for Peter Cazalet , laying of racehorses, trainer, among others, of the stables of the queen mother.
If the French also go through the kitchens of the French Embassy in London and the British Embassy in Paris, it is above all his connections in English high society that allow him to open his first restaurant, Le Gavroche, in Lower Sloane Street, with his brother Michel, whom he convinced to cross the Channel.
The money and the contacts of their former employers (Michel worked for the Rothschilds) thus allow them to inaugurate the place – named after an engraving brought back from Montmartre, but decorated with Miro, Dali or Chagall loaned to the Roux -, with guests such as Ava Gardner, Robert Redford or Charlie Chaplin (who will often come back to taste the Swiss soufflé and lobster mousse with caviar and champagne butter).
In the years that followed, the duo shone by making the (rich) English rediscover the refinements of French classicism, combining the luxury of products (Bresse chicken, Challans duck, foie gras, truffle, etc.) specially exported from France and the delicacies of “bourgeois cuisine” (lamb stew, stew with Albert sauce, etc.).
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