Chef and restaurateur who, with his brother, Albert, transformed the British dining experience

The chef Michel Roux, who has died aged 78, was the younger half of the formidable partnership with his brother, Albert, that transformed the British restaurant scene in the late 1960s with their Michelin-starred restaurant Le Gavroche. Later, as sole director of the Waterside Inn, situated by an idyllic stretch of the Thames at Bray, Michel proved he was a chef’s chef. His menu was a statement of the most classic form of French cooking – nouvelle cuisine had no part to play. Luxury ingredients, many mousses and forcemeats, the finest of pâtisserie, were integral. Michelin soon recognised the quality and this restaurant gained three stars, perhaps the highest professional accolade available, in 1985, which it has retained for longer than any outside France.

From the outset, the Roux brothers’ style of cooking embraced wholeheartedly the standards and practices of classic haute cuisine while offering a refined interpretation of a more homely cuisine bourgeoise. The rapid success of Le Gavroche from its star-studded opening on Lower Sloane Street, London, in 1967, attended by Ava Gardner, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks Jr and a brace of marquesses, enabled the construction of a veritable empire, largely driven by the entrepreneurial spirit of Albert. The pair took in more restaurants, retail outlets, a restaurant supply business distributing produce shipped in from Paris markets, contract and outside catering, and production of vacuum-packed restaurant dishes. Michel was an integral part of this furious activity, while concentrating to an ever greater degree on the kitchen at the Waterside.

RICHARD KAY: French chef Michel Roux never did things in haste. Just as he took time in the kitchen over his signature cheese soufflé, so he conducted his life with equal precision.