Renowned chef Michel Roux dies at age 79

Michel Roux, the famed French chef who along with his brother Albert revitalized fine dining in the UK, has died at the age of 79. The Roux brothers restaurants, Le Gavroche and The Waterside Inn, attracted Britain’s upper crust and provided a training ground for many of the country’s top chefs, including Marco Pierre White, Gordon Ramsay and Marcus Wareing.

Even though Michel and his brother had stepped away from active management of their restaurants, they still had outsized influence on the international food scene through their dozens of cookbooks, which have collectively sold well over a million copies worldwide. In a 2012 interview with the Montreal Gazette, Roux had this to say about his cookbooks and the state of cookbooks in general: “My books are my children,” says Roux, “I take four to six months to write each one. In the photos, you see my hands, my fingers. Eight out of 10 cookbooks aren’t worth buying to burn. We are printing books that are merde.”

In a statement, Roux’s family noted that he was a role model, teacher, and father figure to many in the restaurant industry, and said they “will miss his mischievous sense of fun, his huge, bottomless heart and generosity and kindness that knew no bounds. Michel’s star will shine forever lighting the way for a generation of chefs to follow”.