employed at the British Embassy in Paris. Each then went to cook for a wealthy private employer, Albert for Peter Cazalet, the Queen Mother’s horse trainer, and Michel for Cécile de Rothschild. After opening Le Gavroche they would rotate between kitchen and front of house week by week, until the time Michel took over the Waterside Inn. The egg, finally, had cracked. There was plenty of work to do before then. “We knew nothing of the British indifference to food,” Albert says, “because we had only cooked for the rich.”
AWAITING THE SOUFFLÉ They were bankrolled by the rich, too. The Cazalet’s had invested in Le Gavroche, and on its opening night in 1967, situated as it was then in a small building on the corner of Lower Sloane Street, it is claimed that Ava Gardner, Robert Redford and Charlie Chaplin were among the 150 in attendance. Whether they indeed were scarcely matters. The place was packed with society demi-monde, and the soon to be British Ambassador to France predicted a radiant future. He was not wrong. It was the first restaurant in Britain to be awarded one, two, then three Michelin stars, and has been continuously successful now for forty years. The British may have been indifferent to food, but they were not indifferent to Le Gavroche. An anecdote from Michel’s autobiography serves to illustrate. Albert had created the twice-cooked soufflé Suissesse that was to become a signature, and already it was wildly popular. One regular customer did not even bother to order, but simply sat at their regular table and waited for it to come. On a particular evening in their first year, when Michel’s English had improved just enough that he was prepared to put on his dinner jacket and welcome customers, an elegant and determined young woman came thrusting in, even though the restaurant was full. “I pursued her and even took her by the arm. I told her she could not come in, but she replied, ‘I’ll
ALBERT & MICHEL ROUX
have my usual table,’ pointing to one that was already occupied.” A horrified maitre d’ had to intervene, explaining that this was the Queen’s sister. Michel, however, would not be swayed. She had not booked. He was sorry, but… Despite such treatment, Princess Margaret continued to be a regular customer. Such is the power of success, and of soufflé.
A CRIME TO EAT WELL The food at Le Gavroche—‘the urchin’—has always been in the grand French style. Dishes like lobster mousse with caviar and champagne butter sauce, duck foie gras with truffles, and omelette Rothschild have been on the menu for much of its forty years. It hasn’t always been easy preparing them. In the 1960s and 1970s it was literally a crime to eat well in Britain. “When we opened up you couldn’t get foie gras or poulet de Bresse in this country,” Albert recalls, “so my wife drove to France to smuggle it back in.” Sometimes Madame Roux was stopped by customs; she would simply turn around and try again through a different port. Compare that with Bocuse, who is reported to have hauled great slabs of American beef past French customs officers that, because of his enormous public stature, simply turned their heads, and you will appreciate their tenacity. The Rouxs had stature, too. The newspapers reported Le Gavroche’s opening as one of the events of the year. But then, in terms of British gastronomy, they had no competition, and in Albert they had a man whose business mind has been likened to a steel trap. “You have know whether there is demand for the product,” he says. “Then you’ve got to build up your staff because they are the ones who make it.” Silvano Giraldin, the maitre d’, is a case in point. He has been there for 39 of its 40 years, winning as many awards for his frontof-house skills as the kitchen has for its food. Indeed, as Point had done a half-century earlier, the Roux brothers have trained the generation of young chefs who went on dominate, indeed reinvent, British cooking. Marco Pierre White, Gordon Ramsay and
Opposite: French-born restaurateur brothers Albert and Michel Roux (centre left and right respectively), with their sons Michel Jr (far left) and Alain (far right), 1998.
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