Among the most mediatic chefs on the British scene, Michel Roux Jr. decided to leave television after closing Le Gavroche: "TV was taking me in a direction I had no intention of going. I just enjoy cooking and making people happy through what I do."
The opinion
Being the scion of a cooking dynasty is certainly not easy. The son of Albert Roux and grandson of Michel Roux senior, Michel Roux junior, today 64 years old, grew up in the shadow of a myth: that of Le Gavroche, the forerunner restaurant of haute cuisine on British soil, orbited by the third star under his leadership in 1993 and finally closed earlier this year after 56 years of success.
The chef certainly had his path cleared, without having to worry about starting his own business or finding associates; however, he seems to have suffered psychologically from the bottlenecks through which he moved. So much so, in fact, that he recently stated in an interview with The Times that he never wanted to become a celebrity chef, as has since happened.
After dodging TV appearances in the early stages of his career, he had then reluctantly become a judge on Masterchef: The Professionals for five seasons on the BBC, appearing in the Australian edition and on Hell's Kitchen and starting his own shows, such as Michel Roux's Service, in which he trained perfect outsiders to be cooks and waiters, and Michel Roux's French Country Cooking.
The status of celebrity chef would have been the inevitable consequence of the restaurant's popularity. In essence, Roux laments, it was Le Gavroche that made him famous, something that had never been in his plans. "In fact I recently left television because I was afraid of being overexposed. I never wanted to be a celebrity chef." Seeing his colleagues on television, he would indeed notice the distance of the media persona from real people. "Going on television was taking me in a direction, which I had no intention of going. I just enjoy cooking and making people happy through what I do."
The announcement of Le Gavroche's closure had not been made lightly, but rather with mixed feelings, in the certainty that the restaurant's name would remain legendary. "Le Gavroche means so much, not only to me and the Roux family, but to the whole team and guests, who have become our family over the years," he had said at the time. "I always thought that the eventual closure should happen on the crest of the wave. Le Gavroche is always sold out, every week, but I realized I had to carve out some time to balance private and work, focusing on family and other professional adventures."
