It’s a particularly chilly December night in London, but Caractère, a one-Michelin-starred restaurant in Notting Hill, is slowly filling with guests. It’s a sought-after reservation, not just due to Caractère’s popularity, but because chef and owner Emily Roux is collaborating on a special holiday menu with her father, Michel Roux Jr., one of London’s most famed culinary figures.
“We often get asked around Christmastime, ‘How does the Roux family do Christmas?’” Emily, 35, tells Observer, a few weeks into January. “So many people were interested, so we created our own little Christmas menu. The first year we did it, it was over four nights, and the demand was humongous. The next year, it was even more successful. This year, we extended it into January.”
The lure of the Roux family itself surely contributes to guests’ curiosity. Michel closed the influential Le Gavroche in 2024, which he had helmed since 1991 after taking it over from his equally renowned father, Albert Roux, and uncle, Michel Roux. Emily grew up with the restaurant and spent many hours peeling potatoes and chopping vegetables in its kitchen from an early age. She and her dad now collaborate a few times each year, often doing a special menu for Father’s Day at Caractère. The Christmas event is an opportunity for regulars and newcomers to get a peek at the Roux family legacy.
“Opening Caractère was very much a decision of [creating] my own thing,” Emily says. “But we both get on extremely well.” She adds, “I’m an only child, so we were always a tight little family.”
Emily was immersed in food and cooking from an early age. She grew up primarily in London, although her family also spent time in France. Both her father and grandfather were well-known in the culinary world; Michel Jr. was one of the U.K.’s first real celebrity chefs. When he became a judge on the BBC’s MasterChef: The Professionals in 2008, he started being noticed on the street. “Things have changed so much, but at the time, there wasn’t really anyone that recognizable besides Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay,” Emily says. “It was quite a pivotal moment.”
Although there was no pressure from her family, Emily knew by age 12 or 13 that she also wanted to pursue a career in the culinary world. “I started to feel at home in a kitchen around that age, and school was getting more and more difficult, sitting down behind a desk and concentrating on something that I didn’t think was going to be useful to me,” she says. “The whole school thing and academics and writing were not for me. But I felt so at home in a team and in a brigade and in a kitchen. They became my brothers and sisters.”
Instead of continuing her training in London, Emily decided to enroll in culinary school in France. Her French last name, Roux, is commonplace there, despite holding such prestige in London’s food scene. She attended Institut Paul Bocuse in Lyon for three years, where she lived her best life as “a total nobody.”
“I wanted to do it all for myself,” she says. “I didn’t want to have any judgment or to have anyone saying, ‘Oh, that’s Michel Roux’s daughter.’ I was lucky because I spoke French, so the opportunity was there.”
Instead of returning to London, Emily went to Monaco at the age of 20, accepting a job at Alain Ducasse’s three-Michelin-starred Le Louis XV. It was in the kitchen there that she met Diego Ferrari, her now-husband and the co-owner and chef at Caractère. The couple later moved to Paris, where Emily spent time at Le 39V and Akrame. After three years in Paris, the couple decided they wanted to return to London. Ferrari took an opportunity to become head chef at Le Gavroche, and during his time there, the couple began planning for their own restaurant.
“I didn’t think I had any real vision of it physically, although we didn’t want something too big or too small,” Emily says. “It was more about the vibe. We didn’t want something too fanciful. I wanted guests to feel comfortable and at home, so they would come on a more frequent basis than once a year for an occasion. Having staff that were friendly and not obtrusive. And, actually, that’s something I feel we’ve achieved.”
Caractère opened its doors in a light-filled corner site in Notting Hill in 2018. Since then, tons of buzzy new restaurants have debuted on the nearby streets. “We chose the right place,” Emily notes. “There’s everything that you could want in here now. As a tourist who wants to enjoy food, you could stay in Notting Hill for three days and live your best life.”
Each year, Caractère itself has evolved. Both Emily, who currently handles pastry, and Ferrari, who handles savory, want to continue finessing the dishes and their overall service. Covid-19 was a hurdle, but it also helped to streamline their approach. Instead of serving lunch and dinner every day, they now focus primarily on dinner.
“Because there were so many less covers, we could pay more attention to detail and up our game when it came to the kitchen,” Emily says. “We’re also a smaller amount of staff, so we’re a tighter unit. A lot of positives later on emerged from that.” While the financial situation during Covid was “horrific” and stressful, Emily acknowledges that “it probably did help us for the best.”
One thing that doesn’t change is how Caractère presents its menu. Instead of being divided by categories like “starters” and “mains,” the à la carte menu showcases its offerings with more whimsical descriptions: “subtle,” “delicate,” “robust.” Guests can order individually or build a five-course tasting menu with a dish from each description (the latter runs £150 per person).
“That idea goes with the name of the restaurant and who we are,” Emily says. “We have character. We like being bold and different. Starter, main course, dessert is great, but food has character. Could our characters be intertwined into these specific foods? So it is fun, but there’s also meaning behind it and a reasoning behind it. We have them in mind as we create dishes.”
New dishes come and go based on seasonality, and both chefs tend to collaborate alongside the team. Some never see the light of day, but others emerge in only hours. The Balfegó bluefin tuna dish on the current menu, served with radish, yuzu and chili, was an immediate yes from everyone in the kitchen. “It looked stunning and it tasted amazing,” Emily recalls. “That does happen, but more often we have to change something or tweak things.” A few dishes have established themselves as signatures, particularly a take on cacio e pepe made with celeriac instead of pasta noodles. It pays homage to Ferrari’s Italian heritage, as well as Emily’s personal love of pasta.
“My mother-in-law makes an amazing, traditional cacio e pepe with homemade pasta, and I love it,” she says. “I said to Diego, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be amazing to have my favorite dish, but also your family, intertwined in this restaurant?’” Ferrari worried it wouldn’t be sophisticated enough for Caractère. They trialed a few options, including one with potato noodles, but couldn’t come up with something that seemed suitably elegant and indulgent.
“Then we tried it with the celeriac,” Emily says. “Not only is it kind of the same color as a pasta, [but] cooking it al dente is actually quite nice. The celeriac taste goes incredibly well with the cheese and the pepper. We focused on how to plate it well and using the best possible ingredients. If you love cheese, you’ll order it every time. It was never meant to stay, but we kept it in the end because it speaks about us and the family.”
She adds, of keeping the menu in flux, “To be honest, our regulars can ask us for anything, and we’ll get it for them. But I’d like to think that we change things up in the best way and get people to discover new things.”
Ultimately, Caractère showcases what Emily and Ferrari enjoy cooking, eating and drinking. They don’t serve oysters, for example, because neither of them eats oysters and wouldn’t know how to best showcase the ingredient. “All of the menu and all of everything that is at Caractère is very much us, and something that we’ve approved and agreed upon and loved,” she says. “That’s the beauty of owning your own restaurant. That’s what any young chef who aspires to have a restaurant is like: ‘I want to do me. I want to do what I want.’”
Caractère earned its first Michelin star in early 2025. It was a milestone moment for the restaurant, and it has helped draw a more international crowd into its doors. The goal is to earn a second star, although Emily doesn’t expect that to come right away.
“We definitely have the team in place for that to happen, and we both have the knowledge to make that happen,” she says. “But I think these things also do take time. Diego and I are both ambitious people, and we’ve got a team who wants to follow us on that journey.”
Building a reputation and a restaurant outside of her family has been important for Emily, but she also wants to remain connected to the legacy her grandfather, great-uncle and father have built.
“My family will always be mentioned and intertwined simply because they’ve been so incredibly game-changing for this country and the food scene in this country,” she says. “As I’ve gotten older, I have shoulders to better support what can come with that. Growing up, thank God I was in France, and I was doing my own thing. I think I will always get remarks because my family, like, how did I actually get here? Was it simply because of my name, and my father, and grandfather? Can I actually cook? You need broad shoulders to take that in. And as I’ve grown up and become a mom myself, I’m okay with it.”
She acknowledges that she pushes herself not because it will add to the family legacy, but because she has her own goals. “I don’t think my parents would be any less proud of me if I didn’t have any accolades,” Emily says. “Do I want them? Yes. I want them for myself and for my team and for my restaurant.”
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