Chef Living legend
Le Gavroche may be gone, but it’s far from forgotten: Michel Roux is taking the restaurant out to sea and into the Langham, London, offering up the same Anglo-French classics that made his and his family’s name for 57 years. He talks to James Stagg
Now you’ve had time to reflect, how does it feel to have stepped away from the stove at Le Gavroche? I still have very mixed emotions. It’s actu- ally difficult to put in words. There’s a certain amount of relief and a weight off my shoul- ders, which is understandable. It had such a huge impact on the UK food scene and Le Gavroche meant so much to so many people – not just guests, but staff as well. So I constantly think about that. But there’s no regret. I’d made my mind
up and announced the closure in September 2023, so it really didn’t take that long to set all the wheels in motion. It was important to me to be able to close properly. You hear these horror stories of bosses sending a text to all their staff on a Saturday night or Sunday morning, saying don’t come in on Monday, and I would have never been able to live with myself doing that. My team have grown up with me, like kitchen porter Joao. He’s been with me 25 years and, in fact, kept the place clean and tidy until we vacated it. We wanted to finish on a high with our guests, too. Not many people get to pick and
“I had lots of offers of silly money to buy the business and the name, but I just couldn’t do that”
choose when they leave or when they close their own business, so it was on my terms – I was in control.
Is life very different now? It’s certainly nice to sit on the sofa occasion- ally with Mrs Roux, enjoy a glass of wine and go ‘hmm, this is strange, isn’t it?’ The pres- sure of running a two-Michelin-starred res- taurant for that amount of time is very, very tiring, with sleepless nights and worrying about this, that and the other. I’m the kind of person who was there most days and
One of the sculptures made out of cutlery on the tables 4 | The Caterer | July 2024
PHOTO: RAFFAELLA BICHIRI
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