Espresso: The Wild Stories of the Roux Family History - Michel Roux Jr.

0:00Michel Roux Jr.:Yes, yes people. So, The Hungry Reading List is here. If you listen to the podcast regularly, you know I love reading. I think books are the most beautiful thing in the world. As Stephen King said, they're teleportable magic or something like that. these books i whittled down my gargantuan bookshelf into 46 absolute 30 bangers the link is in the show notes to get the list whatever and it'll also make you a subscriber to our weekly newsletter which i think is sick so yeah get your fucking books buddy

0:34Michel Roux Jr.:those are some of the good traits you picked up from your father what are some of the good traits you picked up from that partnership and what are some of the bad traits you think you've picked up Yeah, yeah. Well, hopefully, you know, the good traits would be humility, staying humble as well, understanding, being fair, being honest. I think, you know, honesty is is very, very important. Honesty and appraisal as well, which I touched upon earlier. uh you know the old man certainly wasn't afraid to say when something was not right um but to say it in a certain way and not be vindictive about it um and and to try and at and nurturing and helping the next generation you know that is key my father and uncle were great mentors um and you know that's something which i i am passionate about as well because i went through that and You know, as I explained, as an apprentice and all the other places that I worked at, I was very fortunate.

1:41I had great mentors as well as my father and uncle. So I think, you know, for me, it's important to recreate that and to carry that on. And my cousin is the same as well. You know, it's really, really important for us to carry that on. So hopefully, you know, they're the positive traits that I've picked up from dad and uncle. and something from my mum, of course, because, you know, it takes two to make a child. And that's her unrelenting sort of energy. And although I'm kicking on now, I'm 65 and I've got a bad back, I'm slowing down. I'm slowing down a bit. But mum is incredible. She has got so much energy.

2:30She is the life and soul of a party at the age of 85, and she keeps on going. She is incredible. That's absolutely incredible. So hopefully I've picked up that kind of from my mom's side. She's also a very good cook as well, not a professional cook, but also a very good home cook and has an amazing palate and understanding of great food. Bad traits? Dad? Gosh. Yeah, there were a few. Well, one of them being his love of women. He was notorious and he wouldn't mind me saying that. He's probably looking down now and laughing his socks off, bless him. Yeah, he was a womanizer and he loved life, loved life to the full, which I don't know if that's a bad trait or a good trait.

3:24Michel Roux Jr.:It comes with both, doesn't it? Any form of gluttony has good things and bad things about it. Oh, he was a glutton too. But he always, as in a food glutton, he loved his food. But he always said that it was because of the war and because he was deprived of so many good things. Just for context, listen, because your father fought in the war, didn't he? Yes, yeah, absolutely. Because that's one thing I was going to ask you, teed me up, It was like, how important do you think his time in the war was to Le Gavroche's success? Well, dad was very, and uncle, very, very headstrong, single-minded. And when they had an idea, they would go with it.

4:09They sometimes argued a lot, actually, because they were different characters. But they both had a goal and they wanted to go for that. and that was open the restaurant and then open a second, a third, a fourth, you know. But that was their goal. And I think that generation that went through such hardship as the war and as kids, they were foisted off and as a lot of children were during the occupation in France, and they saw hardship. And they saw hardship as well growing up as kids because my grandfather, on my father's side, was not the best, shall we say. He was also quite a womanizer, allegedly.

5:04I never met him and used to drink a lot and was not the nicest person. So they had quite a tough childhood, the war, an errant father, shall we say. and and so it was it was it was tough so that forged them that forged the hardness in their characters yeah and deprived of all the good things during the war as well so you know they had very little butter very little cream um which were just two of the items that my father absolutely adored and would and would pig out on sure i mean he could get through a slab of butter in one session i mean it was yeah phenomenal the amount of dairy fats that he would eat uh and he used to say, I don't care.

5:48You know, I don't care. I didn't eat enough of when I was a kid, and I'm going to catch up now. And I remember the first six months when I was an apprentice in Paris, and I stayed on my grandmother's couch in her little flat in Paris. And there was a cupboard that i opened one day and it was full of sugar flour and tinned food uh but enough to last for probably a year wow and i said to grandma what the hell is all this and she said you know michelle you just never know when they may come back uh and she would hoard she would and a lot

6:30Michel Roux Jr.:of that generation did hoard not that that my memories is but there was nazi occupation wasn't there in and so and you're yeah that's mad like again it feels so recent but sorry it feels so far away but also so recent you know what i mean and it's weird that kind of sort of the malleability of time if that makes sense absolutely yeah that's crazy so it's interesting so like yeah because it's almost his sort of um lack of then made him a glutton for life and and i believe so i love that i really love that because then it's inspired it's the same again with the music is like we were so repressed and it's like you have the 60s then the contraception pill comes in like there became a gluttonous um appetite for life post all that deprivation what so that was one bad trait was was any other traits you've picked up because i'm just thinking like my mom and dad like i'm way more like my mom but like she's just probably a bit i'm a bit all over the shop which is like my my uh probably foible but what other things did you pick up from your old man or and or your mum actually that you've had to work on gosh well dad was a gambler he loved gambling my god really oh yeah yeah yeah and a gambler as in he would he would love he used to play cards uh used to play poker there was there's occasions where he would uh have poker nights with fellow chefs.

8:01So we had to prepare some food for them and get the booze ready and they would just have a poker school and vast amount of cash would pass hands. But yes, and he would have an account. He had an account with various bookmakers and he would study form. And yeah, so he enjoyed a flutter, put it that way. But he was also a gambler in life. and he loved to take risks and to take that. But I suppose, and he also lived on credit. I mean, he didn't have that much in the bank. In fact, very little in the bank. And most of the businesses, including Gavroche, were in debt. And he lived on debt and he lived on credit.

8:54um but you know i suppose his philosophy was well you know i'm here i'm living yeah but the thing i

9:02Michel Roux Jr.:got from the book i was to boil it into one sentence fuck it just go for it like in everything yeah and so would you say you're more of a risk taker like than your old man or how do you take no you're not you're way more yeah in that respect yes uh i'm probably more like my uncle my uncle was less of a risk taker, much more calculated,

9:28and maybe even a little bit tight.

9:31Michel Roux Jr.:That's what I was trying to get to, the Lendon-McCartney tension. So you'd have dad that would just go for it. Come on, we've got to open another restaurant. We can borrow this amount of money. We can do this. It'll work. Don't worry. An uncle would go, well, look, hang on a minute. We're not making money here. We're losing money here. And you want to open another restaurant? so they were constantly you know constantly they absolutely adored each other i mean i mean they were almost inseparable but god they could argue and fight thank you so much for listening to that espresso i hope you enjoyed your morning coffee and are ready for the day let's be having your boy and please do subscribe follow the podcast Share this espresso on WhatsApp if you liked it.

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