法国大厨米歇尔·鲁克斯(2)

No one could make an omelette soufle Rothschild (succulent with apricots, perfumed with Cointreau, his tour de force when he was Cecile de Rothschild's chef for nearly six years), the way he could. (Albert was more of a sauce man. ) They bickered all the time, doing a tv cookery show later in which they firted with flleting each other,
but they made a good team; so in 1967 they bought their 90- seater restaurant in Lower Sloane Street and shook up London together. What they offered was classic French restaurant cuisine, short menus cooked fresh a la minute;
not, as was the custom even in high-class British restaurants then, dishes reheated from frozen or cooked far in advance. Every ingredient was fresh too, often sourced from French suppliers whom they knew as friends.
(Later, they ordered in almost everything from Rungis market in Paris. ) As the business expanded, first with the Waterside Inn, then with two smaller restaurants in London,
then with more down -market eateries that plain folk could almost afford, the same philosophy was applied to all of them, and a host of eager young British chefs were trained, some with Roux Scholarships, to run them.
All this made Michel enormously proud, yet it was hardly what he had expected. He had wavered about being a chef. With his looks and his deep voice in his kitchen,
he never needed a microphone-he might have made an opera singer. But love of food ran deep.