Le Gavroche: Michel Roux Jr to shut famend London restaurant for ‘higher work-life steadiness’

Le Gavroche – one of many UK’s most celebrated eating places – is to shut after 57 years, Michel Roux Jr has introduced.

The two Michelin-starred restaurant, in London’s upmarket Mayfair district, has for many years been famed for its high-class tackle traditional French delicacies.

It has additionally been the springboard of the careers of quite a few celeb cooks, together with Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White.

But it’ll shut down early subsequent yr when its lease expires, in accordance with celeb chef, Roux Jr.

The 63-year-old – a decide on MasterChef: The Professionals – stated in an announcement that he needed to have a greater work-life steadiness.

He wrote: “This decision has not been made lightly. Le Gavroche means so much, not just to myself and the Roux family, but to the wider Gavroche team and you, our guests, who have become our family over so many years.

“I’ve all the time felt that ought to Le Gavroche ever shut, it should be on a excessive.

“Le Gavroche continues to be fully booked, week in, week out, but I have known for a while that I must make time for a better work/life balance, so I can spend more time with my family and on my other business ventures.”

Roux Jr added {that a} collection of “celebratory dinners”, beginning in November, can be held till the restaurant’s closure and that the identify would “continue to be a familiar presence” in pop-ups and different Roux ventures.

“This is not the end of Le Gavroche – the restaurant may be closing, but the name will live on,” he added.

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“I could not be more grateful for the restaurant team, who have loved the restaurant as if it were their own.

“The whole group each previous and current, will ceaselessly have my gratitude, and can all the time be thought-about as a part of the Roux household.”

The restaurant was opened in 1967 by French restaurateur brothers Albert and Michel Roux Sr.

At the time, it was the one French restaurant of its type in London, providing classical French meals and the best requirements of cooking and repair.

It was additionally the primary restaurant within the UK to be awarded three Michelin stars, which it held from 1982 to 1993.

Roux Jr, the son of Albert Roux, took over the restaurant since 1991, incomes two Michelin stars and a constant slot within the listing of the world’s prime 50 eating places.

Quite a few prime cooks have additionally “earned their stripes” at Le Gavroche, together with Ramsay, who labored there for a yr in his 20s, and Pierre White, who educated with Albert and Michel Roux Sr on the restaurant within the early Eighties.

Celebrity chef Marcus Wearing, additionally a decide on MasterChef: The Professionals, joined the group at Le Gavroche in 1993, the place he labored alongside Ramsay.