The Roux family are rightly synonymous with Britain’s gastronomic revolution. Under their watch, this country went from a nation of meat-and-two-veg to one of Francophilia and food-fuelled hedonism.
The sixties were a decade of wonder: the Beatles were singing atop a roof on Saville Row, Concord was taking travellers across the pond at supersonic speed, and in a pokey restaurant on Lower Sloane Street, two brothers were making history in a kitchen called Le Gavroche.
Opened in 1967, Albert and Michel created a place which would redefine the UK’s relationship not only with restaurants, but with food. It’s no overstatement to say that London simply didn’t have a restaurant scene at the time. There were caffs, there were hotels. But no awards, no accolades; just a smattering of restaurant guides aimed to consolidate the good from the merely open. Britain’s dining rooms trundled on like a bus without a destination.
Albert and Michel were a lightning rod (as Fay Maschler once reflected: “Who knew until the brothers Roux that chefs had names?”). They relentlessly pursued excellence and provenance, taking weekly trips to France, smuggling in the very best ingredients, many of which were simply were unobtainable in London. This was a time when the finest French Dijon mustard didn’t leave the country, and if you wanted foie gras the closest you could get on British shelves was spam.
Le Gavroche introduced arty types, Sloane Rangers and the money men alike to dishes such as pot au feu and mousseline de homard. At a time of pie and mash shops and towering grill rooms, such cuisine was a revelation of celestial proportions. It was the culinary equivalent of splitting the atom.
Whole duck would arrive tableside having been gently poached in consommé and served with three separate sauces; a level of luxury hirtherto unheard of in buttoned-up Britain. Turbot poche olga, omelette Rothschild, poulet a la poêle, cotes d’Agneau — more than merely dishes, these represented an upending of norms, and were the food education Britain was in dire need of.
By 1972, Le Gavroche was on the map. Robert Redford, Ava Gardner even Charlie Chaplin had dined there and in 1974, it became the first restaurant in the UK to receive a Michelin star. Nine other restaurants were awarded the accolade in the same year, but the names Le Bressan, Le Coq Hardi and La Torque Blanche wouldn’t last.
Le Gavroche not only lasted, it thrived. The achievement of the star was only to be topped in 1977, when it became the first restaurant in the UK to receive two.
Beyond the edible revolution, Le Gavroche was offering a professional one. It was furthering both the restaurant industry and what it meant to be a chef. Suddenly, it was a dignified position, one of aspiration: it required talent and came with prestige. Far from the upstairs-downstairs Britain in which Albert himself had risen, Le Gavroche had become a proving ground for what would become the most important culinary talent of the last 50 years. The cohort of chefs who came through the Le Gavroche kitchens over the decades is mind-boggling. Somewhere a genealogical tree must exist, but for a start, take these names: Pierre Koffmann, Marco Pierre-White, Gordon Ramsay, Marcus Wareing, Jun Tanaka, Monica Galetti, Rowley Leigh, Paul Rankin, Bryn Williams. They all cut their teeth here. It is a legacy that has changed London forever.
In the late Seventies, a third star still eluded the brothers. The popularity of the restaurant meant that the Chelsea site had become too small, and while there was the Waterside Inn, Gavroche’s sister in Bray opened to capture the moneyed weekend crowd, Michel and Albert needed a change in London. The move meant a larger dining space in the basement of 43 Upper Brook Street, and a third star was finally awarded. Le Gavroche became the first restaurant in the UK to be awarded three Michelin stars, and would retain them for eleven years, until 1993.
The formal recognition of the change in chef patron from Albert Roux to his son Michel Roux Jr resulted, as is tradition, in the removal of one star. Whilst the Mayfair restaurant never regained that three-star status, the change was also indicative of Michel Roux Jr’s own style — namely a lighter, fine French offering. Dishes like smoked eel with carrot salad and mushroom and basil soup with lobster mousse echoed this deliberate lightness. Yet there was one dish of day-one heritage which remained, as it does to this day: the Soufflé Suissesse.
To talk about Le Gavroche and to ignore the Soufflé Suissesse would be like discussing Da Vinci while overlooking the Mona Lisa. It’s one of those gloriously defining dishes that not only sets out the stall for the restaurant and its intentions, but that has gone on to shape what the restaurant means in the minds of its diners.
The recipe calls for handfuls of eggs, lashings of heavy cream, whole milk, Gruyère cheese and enough butter to risk a coronary. It’s decadence indicative of the French old-world, yet the resulting Soufflé is impossibly light, floating in a pool of the richest, most compelling béchamel. The addictive Soufflé Suissesse could well be the legal answer to heroin, though the word’s still out on whether the medical world quite support this supposition.
Le Gavroche’s legacy is infallible. Michel Jr is seven years older than his father was, and some 13 years older than his namesake uncle was, when they bowed out of the restaurant. Perhaps it is simply time. Michel Jr. eluded in his goodbye message that its name will live on under the auspices of restaurant pop-ups one-off dinners, through his own cookbooks and what he describes as “other ventures”.
In the statement announcing the restaurant’s closure, Roux concluded by saying: “And to you, our guests. Our success is all down to you. I would like to extend a personal thank you to every single person that has dined with us. Your support means everything to us.”
The line was a hallmark of his own generous nature. At a dinner once, Michel said that as a lifelong Manchester United fan, he wished he could watch more matches at Old Trafford. I’m sure come February 2024 there will be a season ticket waiting for him somewhere. But before the reds get their hands on him, revel in what Le Gavroche has given Britain and eat there. History has been made in this kitchen and in this dining room. The end of Le Gavroche is a loss to Britain’s restaurant landscape. While there’s time to, go and rejoice in it.
