Victor Roussel: A Michelin Trained Private Chef Building Something of His Own

Victor's passion for cooking emerged from a difficult moment. Around the age of 13 or 14, he was diagnosed with cancer. His family did not have much, and the kitchen became something more than just where dinner came from.

"I could just distract myself from day to day life and make something great out of not much," he says. "I think that was a great starting point."

Food was already in his blood. His family had been involved in the industry in various forms, including chefs, chicken farms, and a wine business. Growing up inside that circle, the move toward cooking professionally felt natural. By the time he was old enough to choose a path, the path had already chosen him.

Victor's career began in three-Michelin-star restaurants, where he spent about five years. The hours were brutal and the work was harder than what he does now, but the training was non-negotiable. "Very hard, long hours, much harder than being a private chef," he says. "But you're learning, so that's what's needed and required."

He ended as Chef de Partie Garde Manger and Chef de Partie Saucier - the roles where, as he puts it, "you truly learn the balance of taste, the different components of flavour, and how to play with them."

That foundation shaped everything that came after. The discipline, the technical command, the standards. But it also created an unexpected challenge when he eventually moved into private chefing. Cooking gastronomic food every day for the same client was not what most people actually wanted. Clients wanted variety, comfort, accessibility, and the kind of cooking that fit into a real life rather than a tasting menu.

"There was a big massive thing on, like, I need to open myself, take myself out of this three-Michelin-star expectations," he says. The transition was about more than skill. It was about retraining how he thought about food.

Before settling into his current role, Victor spent five years working as a chef on yachts, eventually as head chef, an experience that took him around the world and reshaped his entire approach to cooking. Travelling between countries on a near-constant basis exposed him to cuisines, ingredients, and techniques that no single restaurant could have offered. It was a humbling stretch of his career, one that reinforced the idea that there is always something to learn from every country and every kitchen, no matter how much training you have behind you.

The work also taught him a different lesson about teamwork. Life on a boat is unforgiving in the way it exposes the importance of every role. Each crew member has a purpose, and the whole only functions when everyone holds their own. Victor was part of the crew on the biggest monomast sailboat in the world, sailing around South America, a journey he describes as one of the formative adventures of his life. Spending that much time on rough seas with the same group of people teaches you what team spirit actually means.

Victor now works as a private chef for a billionaire client in France. The role is intense in a different way than restaurant work. Travelling with clients in different villas across the globe or on their yachts, requires genuine endurance and creativity.

"You can't just focus on one cuisine or one way of doing things," he says. "You really need to open different books every day." He pulls from cookbooks, from Instagram, from whatever inspiration is around him.

The role also gives him meaningful stretches of free time between trips, which is when he focuses on his own work. He splits those weeks between friends and visits to Ibiza, where his girlfriend lives. He describes the contrast between France and Ibiza as part of what keeps things interesting. France leans into its own tradition, with seafood, oysters, white wine, fish, and French bistro culture. Ibiza can be very traditional with its tapas culture and the beautiful Spanish sun-kissed produce, but can also be more international, with Korean, Chilean, and raw food influences mixing together freely.

Victor approaches recipe development from instinct rather than method. He starts with a flavor he wants to chase, then works backward into a dish. "I never walk around the recipe. I always walk around flavors and ideas, and then the recipe comes after," he says.

He has been making a lot of pasta lately. For pasta specifically, he often begins with a shape, then builds the flavor profile from there. The day of his interview, he was planning a beetroot and gorgonzola pasta with a reduction to balance it. He knew the flavors would work together. The structure came after.

That openness to combinations is something he tries to extend across every cuisine. French and Italian remain his foundation, but he is actively opening himself up to Asian cooking.

"Cooking is vast," he says. "If you stick to one cuisine, you become limited. If you open up to everything, it's a big playground."

Victor is relatively new to creating content. He treats it partly as a portfolio for future clients, partly as a creative outlet, and partly as a question he is still trying to answer.

"I'm still on the journey to understand why am I really doing this," he says. "I really wanted to go as far as I can and see what's the potential behind it."

The time commitment is significant. A single short video can take him a full day from shopping through cooking, filming, and editing. Posting twice a week means giving up real chunks of his free time. He is still working on his workflow and figuring out how to make the process more efficient, but he is not rushing it.

His standard is internal.

He pushes himself to make every video better than the last. "Can I do better? Can I improve?" he says. "If you think that way, no video is ever going to be perfect. But you can see the improvement, and that's what I like to do."

He has decided never to delete his first video. He sees it as a marker of where he started, and a reminder of how far the work has come in a year.

Like every creator, Victor has run up against the unpredictability of Instagram. Some videos he expects to do well do not. Some videos he is unsure about take off. His advice to himself is to stop overthinking it.

"You can't think too much," he says. "You just need to be a bit delusional. Keep doing it no matter what, and then let's see how it goes."

He has had a few real successes that helped him understand what works, but he is also honest about the fact that not every flat video can be blamed on the algorithm. "Sometimes the video is just not good enough," he says. "You just need to ask yourself the right question."

Victor's advice for anyone reading his story splits into two parts. For cooks, his message is about curiosity.

"Never stick to one format of cooking," he says. "The actual secret to keep that flame alive as a chef or as a cooking amateur is to constantly have this curiosity of food. Once you specialize yourself in something too much, you get stuck. That's where the passion starts to die. Always expand, expand, expand."

For creators, the message is simpler and more practical. Do better than your last video. Keep posting. Stay slightly delusional about who is going to see it. The improvement and the audience will come if you keep showing up.

Asked what he would eat for the rest of his life if he had to pick one thing, Victor does not hesitate. Pasta. Every day, every variation.

It is the answer of a chef who has trained in some of the most elaborate kitchens in the world and still believes in the power of a single well-made dish.

Victor's career so far has covered every level of professional cooking, from the rigor of three-Michelin-star kitchens, to superyachts all around the world to the bespoke creativity of cooking for some of the wealthiest families . What he is building online is something different. It is a record of his own taste, his own development, and his willingness to keep learning. Whether it stays a portfolio or grows into something larger, the work itself is the point.

Explore Victor’s recipes on Chefadora at @victorrousselchef and follow him on Instagram at @victorroussel.chef, where he shares pasta-forward, technique-driven recipes shaped by years of Michelin-star training and a curiosity for cuisines well beyond France. Chefadora is proud to spotlight chefs like Victor who are bringing the discipline of professional kitchens to a wider audience and continuing to evolve their craft along the way.

Updated on 25 May 2026