Before Le Gavroche there was, well, not very much really: no great landmark restaurants in London, no feverishly competitive community of chefs and, frankly, very little in the way of great food. 'Most people who ate in restaurants went to hotels,' says Albert Roux, who opened the restaurant with his younger brother Michel in 1967. 'We knew that the market was there and, in any case it wasn't such a big gamble. It was only a 50-seat restaurant.' They were also perfectly positioned to do it. Albert and Michel, the sons and grandsons of charcutiers, were in London working as personal chefs to, respectively, the Cazelet and the Rothschild families. 'We knew nothing of the British indifference to food because we had only ever cooked for the rich,' Albert says.
The Cazelets and half a dozen of their friends - mostly the cream of the aristocracy - put up the money. Mrs Cazelet invited just 450 of her most intimate friends to the opening night buffet at the Mayfair site - and 400 came. 'I would never wish to live through that night again,' Albert says. Ava Gardner and Robert Redford were there, as was Charlie Chaplin. He came back every night for dinner the next week, chauffeured across town from his suite at the Savoy. The newspapers reported the restaurant's arrival as one of the great events of the year and, while it eventually moved site to its current premises on Upper Brook Street, nothing else has changed. It has always got the headlines. It was the first British restaurant to win a Michelin star. And then the first to win a second and finally, in 1982, the first to win a third.
Accordingly, the food has always been the grandest of French. Dishes like lobster mousse with caviar and champagne butter sauce, duck foie gras with truffles, and omelette Rothschild have been on the menu for much of its 35 years, though it hasn't been always easy preparing them.
'When we opened up you couldn't get foie gras or poulet de bresse in this country,' Albert recalls, 'so my wife drove to France to smuggle it back in.' In the 1960s and 1970s it was literally a crime to eat well in Britain. Sometimes Madame Roux was stopped by customs. She would simply turn around and try again through a different port. It is hard to overstate the importance of Le Gavroche - the urchin - on British gastronomy. It is not merely that it became the flagship of a restaurant empire that would eventually include Britain's other great three-star establishment, the Waterside Inn at Bray, presided over by Michel. It is also the names of those who have been through the kitchen: Marco Pierre White, Gordon Ramsay, Pierre Koffman of La Tante Claire, Marcus Wareing of Petrus, Phillip Howard of The Square, and many others.
But sit with Albert over lunch and it is not food that he talks about. It is almost as if the quality of the food is a given. The man has a business mind like a steel trap. 'I am the entrepreneur of the family,' he says, simply. 'Much against the will of my brother.' (The rivalry between the two is legendary.) 'His idea was one restaurant with his brother until he died. Michel was devastated when I started opening new places.' Eventually they decided to separate out the business, so that Albert would take Le Gavroche and Michel, the Waterside Inn, a deal 'sealed with a kiss'.
As to how to make a business work so well for so long 'you need to know whether there is demand for the product', Albert says. 'Then you've got to build up your staff because they are the ones who make it.' Silvano Giraldin, the Maitre d', is a case in point. He has been there for 34 of its 35 years and has won as many awards for his front-of-house skills as the kitchen has for its food. There is the famous story of the woman who disappeared to the toilet only to be followed, into the same cubicle, by her male dining companion. Silvano redirected other women to another set of toilets until the couple returned 45 minutes later. 'Here the atmosphere is very clubby,' Albert says, 'But it is not geriatric. I'm the only one with a stick.'
In 1991, on his fifty-fifth birthday, Albert Roux handed over the kitchen to his son Michel Junior and he does not now interfere. 'Succession is always very difficult. It becomes even more so if you keep going back. It is his now.' Michel has changed very little save that the food is a little lighter, men no longer have to wear ties and Michael Winner is banned 'for being so rude and abusive when demanding a table that he drove one member of staff to tears', regardless of what he is wearing.
Two years after the handover Le Gavroche was downgraded from three Michelin stars to two. 'It hurt me,' the father says, 'but I was also very pleased because if he gets his third star it will be his.' As to the son, he is not particularly bothered. 'Three stars does not necessarily mean a financially viable business,' Michel Jnr says. 'It's an incredibly expensive thing to do.' He is content to carry on producing his brand of what he calls 'classic French food from a new generation'. And meanwhile, in the delicious green and red snug of the dining room, nobody is complaining. Indeed there is a hoary old joke, usually told about Harvey Nichols or Harrods, which could easily be applied to the restaurant. Where should you go in the event of nuclear attack? Le Gavroche, because nothing awful ever happens there.
Le Gavroche, 43 Upper Brook Street, London W1. Tel 020 7408 0881
Rouxs of engagement
Diners past and present
Ava Gardner
Jon Bon Jovi
Princess Diana
Tom Jones
Most of Margaret Thatcher's cabinet
Margaret Thatcher
Robert Redford
Charlie Chaplin
Who doesn't go there
Michael Winner
What to eat
Poached oysters in champagne
Roast saddle of rabbit
'Pot-au-feu' of duck
Omelette Rothschild
What to drink
Something big and French from the 65,000 bottles in the cellar
When to go
Lunchtime. At £40 a head, including half a bottle of very good wine, it's one of best deals in London.
What to say
I'm a friend of Silvano's.
What not to say
I'm a friend of Michael Winner's.
