Three restaurants. Two daughters. Three Michelin stars. Hélène Darroze got a lot on her plate

Hélène Darroze runs restaurants in London, Paris and Moscow and yet still manages to be at the school gates to pick up her two adopted daughters. Lydia Slater meets a Michelin-starred supermum
Lydia Slater27 March 2014

'You like sushi, don't you, Quiterie?'

‘No!’ declares Quiterie, a tiny girl with an enormous personality. ‘I only like lemon cake!’ It is rather reassuring that even world-famous chefs have problems getting their kids to expand their culinary repertoire.

Darroze, 47, is the multi-Michelin-starred genius who tends the stoves at the Connaught. She says she was ‘born in a saucepan’, as her family owned an acclaimed restaurant in south-west France. And the culinary tradition continues. Darroze’s elder daughter Charlotte, nearly seven, spent her babyhood hanging out in her mother’s kitchens, while Quiterie (who in fact loves sushi, Darroze insists) is already a keen cook.

‘Her favourite thing is making cakes. But when I make a soup or a sauce, she puts her chair in front of the oven and stands on it with a spoon in her hand. The other day we made pumpkin soup.’ On Sundays, the children prepare breakfast for their maman. ‘They know what I like — bread and ham or smoked salmon with Philadelphia. They lay it out nicely.’

Darroze has also handed down her obsession with finding the best ingredients. ‘They love going to the market and choosing the products,’ she says. ‘They eat everything.’ These days, Darroze doesn’t work on Sundays and tries to get Saturdays off, so she can spend more time with her children. ‘We go to Selfridges and Borough Market. One of our best friends is the blonde lady who sells the vegetables — she’s seen them growing up.’

You might assume that this interest in food runs in the blood. But you would be wrong. Darroze’s daughters were both adopted from different orphanages in Vietnam. Somehow, the chef has managed to combine a stressful career running three acclaimed restaurants in different countries (London, Paris and Moscow) with being a single mother to two abandoned children. A supermum indeed.

Her Mayfair flat around the corner from her restaurant at the Connaught hotel is unashamedly child-focused. A pink fairy castle takes pride of place in the sitting room, there are soft toys everywhere and the walls are lined with photographs of Charlotte, Quiterie and their beaming mother. Our interview is conducted to the sound of Quiterie singing as she draws pictures in her bedroom, while Charlotte
chatters to her sister in English and to the nanny in equally fluent French.

Darroze says she always wanted to adopt. ‘When I was 15, I asked my parents to adopt a child but they said no,’ she says in her soft, French-accented voice. ‘I can’t explain why. I also always wanted a biological child but it didn’t happen, because I didn’t find a man.’ If she had fallen in love in her thirties, she thinks she would have given up her culinary career and concentrated on motherhood.

But it wasn’t until she turned 40 and was running her eponymous two-Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris that she decided to adopt. ‘By then, I had a team behind me I could rely on and the salary to be able to pay someone six days a week from 9am to 11pm to help.’ She also had the assistance of her friend Laeticia Hallyday, wife of the French rocker Johnny, who has adopted two Vietnamese girls herself; Darroze is godmother to the younger, Joy. ‘Laeticia and Johnny, and celebrities like Angelina Jolie, have done a lot for adoption,’ says Darroze. ‘They made it fashionable, but also not unusual. Now you can adopt because you want to, not because you can’t have a baby yourself. It’s not something to be ashamed of — for the children or the family.’

Darroze’s decision to adopt a Vietnamese child was partly practical. ‘Not all countries agree to give children to single mothers, but Vietnam was one of them,’ she admits. ‘But I’m linked with Vietnam because one of my great-aunts, with whom I had a close relationship, used to live there.’ After an intense nine-month process, during which officials met her family and friends while she was assessed by a psychologist, she was granted permission to adopt by the French authorities.

By then, Laeticia Hallyday had introduced Darroze to a philanthropic couple who ran several orphanages in Vietnam. She was offered Charlotte, a baby from north Vietnam who had been given up by her mother. Charlotte, by then three months old, had been an unhappy baby. ‘She cried all the time. They took her to hospital seven times because they thought something was wrong. But two days before I arrived, she stopped crying and never cried again,’ she says with a proud smile.

A few months after Charlotte arrived in France, the Connaught approached Darroze with the offer to take over its restaurant (previously under the aegis of Angela Hartnett). Darroze refused. ‘I knew I would never manage. And then straight away I thought, oh my God, this is the biggest mistake of my life.’

So by the time Charlotte was one, she was a regular commuter on Eurostar as her mother shuttled between Restaurant Hélène Darroze on Paris’ Left Bank and the Connaught in Mayfair. Darroze’s parents were concerned that she was taking on too much. And they were appalled when, a year later, she announced she was trying to adopt a second baby. Undeterred, Darroze pressed ahead and was offered another baby girl, four months old, who, according to her records, had been left in the car park of a Hanoi orphanage.

Charlotte, who was two, went with Darroze for the handover. ‘When we arrived, she took my hand and looked at me to say, “Let’s go.” I’m sure she knew it would never be just the two of us any more. She was the first to take Quiterie in her arms, so it was even more emotional.’

If the chit-chat from the next-door bedroom is anything to go by, the girls adore each other. They are aware of their background but it’s rarely mentioned. ‘One day, Charlotte saw a lady on TV and said, “Do you think it could be the lady who gave birth to me? That’s not cool, what she did.” So I explained that she knew she couldn’t take care of her, and that I would do it better. And she said, “Yes, and it’s for life.” So she understands that it will be forever.’

Perhaps it’s because of the effort to create her family that Darroze radiates serene contentment despite her schedule. Every morning, she’s up at 7am to take the girls to school before work; she’s at the school gates at 3.30pm to give them hot chocolate and back home at 5pm to supervise homework and bedtime. Then she’s at the Connaught for the dinner service (signature dish: chicken with foie gras, black truffle, potato and mizuna) until 11pm. She also travels for ten days each month to her restaurants in Paris and Moscow, so she Skypes her daughters twice a day. ‘But they don’t like it if I’m away for more than three days at a time.’

On top of all this, Darroze has helped to set up and fund a charity with Hallyday, La Bonne Étoile, which helps to care for and educate children in Vietnam with disabilities and HIV. Does this punishing schedule leave her suffering maternal guilt? ‘No,’ she says, looking astonished. ‘They are in a good home, they are not unhappy. Now I’m a mum, I feel more responsible even at work.

‘Sometimes they say, “Why don’t we have a father?” I tell them the truth, that I didn’t find someone I loved. But one day perhaps it will happen. They are not disturbed.’

In fact, Darroze is such a doting parent, it’s impossible to believe her daughters lack for anything. Her weekends are devoted to them; even Mother’s Day will be spent taking Charlotte riding as an early birthday treat.

‘I spoil my children,’ she admits. ‘On Saturday we went to Harrods because I wanted to buy them a special dress from Dolce & Gabbana. But I think I give them good values. They know about the charity, and where they are from. I tell them how lucky they are.’

Would she like them to follow in her footsteps? ‘Honestly? No,’ she says. ‘I love my job, but I had to make a lot of sacrifices.’ Happily, motherhood wasn’t one of them.

Hélène Darroze at the Connaught is serving a new set lunch menu, three courses for £38 (the-connaught.co.uk)

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