Michel Roux: Meeting the Master
It all started with a simple email back in September: Stéphanie Aubriot, a young French pastry chef at a new restaurant in Danang wanted to know a bit more about Marou. She had read about us and was curious to meet us and see for herself how we made the chocolate and whether it was any good.
We responded as we often do by saying: please come and have a look. So one weekend Stéphanie flew from Danang to Ho Chi Minh City and visited the cocoa farm of Mr Duc in Ba Ria, and our chocolate factory. Talking to her during the trip she told us her story, how she came from a family of bakers in the historical Eastern city of Nancy in France and having learnt all there was to know about making bread and cake in the bakery founded by her grandfather she was still craving for more. So she decided to leave it all behind and go back to school, and what a school: she learned from Olivier Bajard in Perpignan, a ‘MOF’ or Meilleur Ouvrier de France and Pastry World Champion. Quickly Stéphanie rose to the top, she had the know how of those born in the business and the passion to become one of the best, and so her new mentor gave her a piece of advice: you’re young, you should go and have a look outside France, I think I know the place just for you, and so with a glowing recommendation she ended up in Bray, a small Berkshire village that is home to half of the 3 Michelin star restaurants in the UK…
When you arrive at the Waterside Inn, recounted Stéphanie, you just have to forget everything you have learned. In the kitchen of the legendary restaurant founded by Michel Roux more than 40 years ago, you first absorb the atmosphere, the spirit of how things are done, this is not Hell’s Kitchen, it’s the complete opposite: a team of highly skilled people dedicated to achieving perfection on a daily basis. And then you get to learn from the Master himself. “Don’t forget he was a pastry chef first!”
When I set foot at La Maison 1888 last week, I was more than a little apprehensive. Michel Roux has achieved so much in a career spanning more than half a century that you could expect him to either enjoy a well-deserved retirement or to have built himself into a monument. But nothing would be further from the truth: he is intellectually agile, always on the lookout for new ideas and has a wonderful sense of humour, in a word he is charming!
After opening our appetite with some scrambled egg and black truffle, I move on to a classic foie gras starter, and as the spectacular main course lobster arrives, Michel Roux points out that with its ginger and cilantro, this recipe that has been on the menu for more than 30 years at the Waterside Inn is a lot less traditional than his cuisine is sometimes portrayed to be.
But why I wondered, at an age when many aspire to a more sedentary life should he haven taken up the challenge of being the first 3-star chef to open a restaurant in Vietnam?
Michel Roux answered this question head on, his blue eyes vibrating with a youthful urgency: the owner of the Intercontinental Resort (where La Maison 1888 is nestled) has given me carte blanche, we’re creating a dining experience on a whole new level in Vietnam, but I am not new to Asia, 30 years ago I would come with all my kitchen staff and stay at the Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong for a month at a time, in those days you couldn’t find fine French cuisine in Asia, things have moved on but Vietnam is new to this game, so I’ve brought here a very strong team: Stéphane the Chef, Bastien the Sous Chef, Stéphanie the Pastry Chef and Simone, the Maitre d'hôtel, they have all honed their art with me at the Waterside Inn. And now they are training the Vietnamese staff who are tremendously dedicated, they learn very fast.
I have also, he said, put together the finest wine menu in Vietnam, you can’t expect people to have a 3-star experience and drink the same wines you would find in any cantine…
Then with a chuckle he adds, but you know back in the 60s it was the same thing in London, none of our British staff knew how to do anything in the kitchen, they had to learn from scratch!
Like the rest of the menu at the Waterside Inn, the desserts created at La Maison 1888 have an air of timelessness, classic recipes executed with perfection, using the best ingredients: we sampled in quick succession a marquise, then a soufflé and a tarte Tatin.
Ah ingredients… This is how we got to meet Michel Roux in the first place. Based on the favourable report by Stéphanie, Mr. Roux tasted our chocolates during his last visit to Vietnam last October and found them, particularly our Lam Dong 74% to be good enough for the creation of desserts at La Maison 1888 and, why not? at the Waterside Inn. Having met him in the extraordinary setting of La Maison 1888 we invited him to visit our modest factory in Thu Duc.
