French chef helped raise the abysmal reputation of British restaurant food

Michel Roux, who has died aged 78, was a French chef who championed the cause of excellence in English restaurant cooking for half a century; with his brother Albert, he was responsible for elevating the national reputation for food which, when the pair of them arrived in London in 1967 to open Le Gavroche, was nothing short of abysmal.

The restaurant that became synonymous with the name of Michel Roux was the Waterside Inn at Bray, beside the Thames, west of London. It was the second restaurant in Britain to achieve three Michelin stars, in 1985 – the first was Le Gavroche, in 1982 – and maintains them to this day.

The achievement of Michel and Albert was not limited to the elite domain of ultra-sophisticated (and ultra-expensive) restaurant cooking. The Roux culinary empire included several cheaper restaurants – notably Gavvers and Roux’ll Britannia – as well as shops, food products and private catering services.

Besides Le Gavroche and the Waterside, another Roux flagship was London’s most upmarket ‘‘deli’’, a combined butcher’s, patisserie, grocer and traiteur, Boucherie Lamartine, in Pimlico, central London. It sold meat and vegetables flown in from the markets of France, and customers could buy fresh foie gras by the kilogram over the counter without having placed an order.

While the terrier-like Albert had a strong head for business, and relished the role of tough negotiator for the Roux empire, Michel always like to appear well-groomed and dapper, and to cultivate the reputation of bon viveur. He drank ‘‘one or two bottles of wine a day’’ for most of his life, and had an unquenchable appetite for champagne.

The two brothers took to television. In their first series, The Roux Brothers (1988), they found a remarkable amount to disagree about, considering that they held the joint title of Britain’s greatest gastronomic gurus. The squabbling – for the most part affectionate – over small matters of culinary technique, earned them the epithet ‘‘the Row Brothers’’, but intense Gallic bickering made for excellent television. Like Albert, Michel was an exacting taskmaster who demanded perfection from his staff – and sometimes, it seemed, a little more.

This approach enabled them to pioneer, almost single-handedly, a revolution in the standards of raw materials available to restaurateurs. From the start at Le Gavroche they refused to accept the stale fish, bruised fruit and poorly butchered meat that others allowed into their kitchens. Instead they chose a handful of suppliers and set out to reeducate them where necessary.

Perhaps Michel’s greatest contribution to British cooking was that he impressed on a new generation of young chefs his own high

‘‘The way these people handle food is a crime. They don’t even know the basics . . . Instead, they are intent on having a giggle and a joke.’’

Michel Roux comments on the TV show Can’t Cook, Won’t Cook

restaurateur b April 19, 1941 d March 12, 2020 standards and unmatched knowledge. They in turn passed on the philosophy of excellence to their sous chefs.

Michel Andre Roux was born in Charolles, Burgundy, the son of a charcutier. At the age of 14 he became, like his brother before him, an apprentice patissier, at the Patisserie Loyal in Paris. It was an aspect of cooking at which he excelled, even beyond his brother, and which remained an abiding passion throughout his life.

He spent two years as a pastry cook at the British embassy in Paris, and was then a commis chef with Cecile de Rothschild for a year, in 1959, before military service intervened (part of which was spent in Algeria).

He and Albert opened Le Gavroche in west London in the spring of 1967, backed by several wealthy and enthusiastic diners. They took it in turns to cook at the stove, the other acting as maitre d’. They never worked together during service. A year later Le Gavroche was among the most fashionable eateries in London – and, at £6 or £7 a head, one of the most expensive.

The pair set about finding a second site and eventually settled on the Waterside Inn. They retained the name but changed everything else, and their second restaurant opened in 1976. To begin with, they ran both restaurants as a team, but eventually Albert concentrated on Le Gavroche, Michel on the Waterside.

In 1979 the brothers’ New Classic Cuisine was published, one of the bestselling cookbooks of the 1980s and one of the first to make the top echelon of modern restaurant cookery comprehensible to ambitious home cooks.

In 1984, with sponsorship from Diners Club, Albert and Michel set up a scholarship for young chefs, offering a three-month apprenticeship at a triple-Michelin-starred restaurant of the winner’s choice. The inaugural winner was Andrew Fairlie – who established Scotland’s first restaurant with two Michelin stars, but who died last year – and it remains a highly coveted award among aspiring culinary stars.

Michel Roux’s success allowed him to buy a house near Saint-Tropez, where he grew grapes over a hectare of land. He would escape there whenever the pressures of the Waterside allowed. In 2002 he handed the restaurant over to his son Alain. In 2012 he opened Maison 1888 in Danang, Vietnam, and in 2018 father and son opened Roux at Skindles, near the Waterside.

Though he appeared as a guest judge on Masterchef: The Professionals, he disdained some other cookery programmes, complaining of Can’t Cook, Won’t Cook: ‘‘The way these people handle food is a crime. They don’t even know the basics . . . Instead, they are intent on having a giggle and a joke.’’

He was made a Chevalier in the Ordre national du Merite in 1987 and Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1990. In 2002 he was made an honorary OBE and in 2004 a Chevalier of the Legion d’honneur.

He married Australian wife Robyn in 1984; she died in 2017. He is survived by two daughters and a son from a previous marriage. –