Robyn Joyce Bio, Wiki
Robyn Roux (née Joyce) was the wife of Michel Roux, a French-born chef, and restaurateur working in Britain. Robyn died in 2017 while her husband, Michel Roux died at the age of 78 at home in Bray, Berkshire, following a history of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis on March 12th, 2020.
Robyn Joyce & Michel Roux
Robyn Joyce was the second wife Roux. The two met after being set up on a blind date in 1982 with her by former apprentice Leigh Stone-Herbert in Sydney, Australia. It was something of a coup de foudre. He had told a friend he wanted to meet a nice girl in Sydney, who had ‘something up there’ in the brain department and loved her food and wine. The relationship has been credited with opening the door to Australian chefs being trained by the Roux brothers.
Four days later he asked the young woman to move to England with him. She agreed, and in 1984 the couple married. (Robyn predeceased him, dying in 2017.)
Who is Michel Roux?
Michel Roux, OBE, also known as Michel Roux Snr., was a French-born chef and restaurateur working in Britain. Along with his brother Albert, he opened Le Gavroche, later to become the first three Michelin starred restaurant in Britain, and The Waterside Inn, which was the first restaurant outside France to hold three stars for a period of 25 years.
Roux followed his brother into becoming a pastry chef, and again to England in order to open their first restaurant. The two have been described as the “godfathers of modern restaurant cuisine in the UK”, and Roux was inducted into several French orders and received two-lifetime achievement awards from different publications. He was decorated during a period of National Service for France during the 1960s.
Roux founded the Roux Brothers Scholarship along with Albert in 1984 and worked as a consultant for companies such as British Airways and Celebrity Cruises over the years. After he and his brother split the business in 1986, Roux took the Waterside Inn, which he handed over to his son, Alain, in 2002. He remained an active food writer and appeared on television shows such as Saturday Kitchen, MasterChef, and the Roux family-centric series, The Roux Legacy, and on the Woman’s Hour programme on BBC Radio 4.
