Michel Roux Jr was a real trailblazer in the UK’s restaurant scene.
The former owner of La Gavroche, opened by his father Albert, was a key component in the restaurant becoming the first in the UK to receive three Michelin stars, and it held them between 1982 and 1993. Serving classic French cuisines for 56 years, La Gavroche closed in January 2024 with two of its Michelin stars still intact.
Roux Jr has also been a prominent TV fixture, appearing on Michel Roux's Service, MasterChef: The Professionals, Food and Drink, and Saturday Kitchen, and he was a judge on Five Star Kitchen: Britain's Next Great Chef in 2023.
Appearing on the Table Manners podcast, hosted by musician Jessie Ware alongside mum Lennie, Roux Jr explained where the Jr comes from in his name. After all, his father was called Albert, so the conventional juniordom doesn’t seem to apply.
“We have the wonderful Michelin star chef, and owner of La Gavroche, Michel Roux Jr joining us for lunch this week,” said the podcast’s caption on Instagram.
“Mum was surprisingly calm considering she was cooking for a double Michelin star chef, but Michel even got involved and guided her through the fish cooking!”
During the episode, Roux Jr revealed that there was a rather bawdy origin to the ‘junior’ moniker, all relating to letters to his uncle with whom he shares the name ‘Michel’.
“I rented a flat off him,” Roux Jr said of his relationship with his uncle. “I was getting lots of letters addressed to ‘Michel Roux’, which I automatically opened, but they were not for me, they were for my uncle. And occasionally they were letters from his girlfriends - yes, plural.
He continued: “Some of them were just charming letters and, you know, rather nice. Others were rather amorous and very cheeky.”
After being asked whether he read them, he said: “Curiosity gets the better of you, doesn’t it? One day, a letter came in addressed to ‘Michel Roux’, and it was in a padded envelope and quite chunky. I opened it up and there was another letter, but a pair of knickers in there as well. So I said, ‘enough is enough’.”
That would do it, wouldn’t it? It’s one thing to share a name with an uncle, but it’s another to accidentally receive a pair of knickers intended for him.
“From that day on I said, ‘right, that’s it, I’m going to take ‘Junior’ onto my name’.”
Featured Image Credit: Mike Marsland / Contributor/Getty ImagesTopics: TV and Film, Celebrity, Social Media
Rachael Davis