Michel Roux followed his brother into becoming a pastry chef and again to England in order to open their first restaurant.
27 Facts About Michel Roux
2.
Michel Roux was decorated during a period of National Service for France during the 1960s.
3.
Michel Roux founded the Roux Brothers Scholarship along with Albert in 1984, and worked as a consultant for companies such as British Airways and Celebrity Cruises over the years.
4.
Michel Roux remained an active food writer and appeared on television shows such as Saturday Kitchen, MasterChef and the Roux family-centric series The Roux Legacy, and on the Woman's Hour programme on BBC Radio 4.
5.
Michel Roux was born on 19 April 1941 in Charolles, Saone-et-Loire, in a room above his grandfather's charcuterie.
6.
Michel Roux moved to Paris with his family after the war, where his father Michel set up his own charcuterie, after not taking over the family business in Charolles.
7.
Michel Roux's father gambled away all of the family's money, and the shop was closed to prevent it from going bankrupt.
8.
Michel Roux became an apprentice to Camille Loyal in Belleville, working seventy-hour weeks.
9.
Michel Roux moved on from there to become a chef in Philippe de Rothschild's service, while Albert moved to England to work there.
10.
Between 1960 and 1962, Michel Roux served his French National Service.
11.
Michel Roux was first stationed at the Palace of Versailles, but was later posted overseas in Bechar, Algeria.
12.
Michel Roux was awarded the Medaille commemorative des operations de securite et de maintien de l'ordre en Afrique du Nord.
13.
Michel Roux nearly decided to give up cooking to become an opera singer, but instead followed Albert to London, despite not being able to speak English.
14.
In 1974, when Michelin stars were first awarded in the UK, Le Gavroche and the Waterside Inn both won a star, and when a number of restaurants won two Michelin stars for the first time in 1977, both Roux restaurants were among them.
15.
In 1986 the brothers split their restaurant business between them, following a disagreement over the direction that their joint business should take; Albert took Le Gavroche, while Michel Roux took the Waterside Inn.
16.
Michel Roux was a consultant to British Airways for twenty years between 1983 and 2003, and for Celebrity Cruises since 1990.
17.
The Michel Roux brothers' catering company was purchased by Compass Group in 1993, with Albert retained as a consultant.
18.
In July 2008, Michel Roux announced that he would move permanently to Crans-Montana, Switzerland, citing concerns about the state of public safety in Britain.
19.
Michel Roux owned a vineyard and house on the Cote d'Azur in France.
20.
Since 2014, Michel Roux worked with British baking company, Bakedin, as a consultant reviewing and approving all recipes.
21.
Together with his brother Albert, Michel Roux appeared on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs on 26 October 1986.
22.
Michel Roux had previously won the Lifetime Achievement award from Tatler magazine in 2008.
23.
Many well known chefs have been trained by one or the other of the Roux brothers, with Michel estimating in 2010 that "Half of the Michelin star-holders in Britain come from either my brother's kitchen or my kitchen".
24.
Michel Roux was awarded the Meilleur Ouvrier de France en Patisserie in 1976.
25.
Michel Roux was a member of several orders in France.
26.
Michel Roux met his second wife Robyn Joyce, after being set up on a blind date with her by former apprentice Leigh Stone-Herbert in Sydney, Australia.
27.
Michel Roux died on the night of 11 March 2020, at home in Bray, Berkshire, aged 78, following a history of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.