Elena's L'Etoile, 30 Charlotte Street, London W1 (020 7636 7189). Meal for two, including wine and service, £80

I had a rotten cold. I was being stalked by a desk full of paperwork. The sash windows needed fixing, the hedge needed cutting and my left foot hurt in a way that suggested imminent amputation or, at the very least, a trip to the chiropodist.

I needed cosseting and I knew exactly where to go. Or, to be more exact, who to go to. Her name is Elena Salvoni and she is the queen of maitre d's.

Elena, a tiny woman of sensible heels and black A-line skirt, started waitressing in Soho in 1942. For 30 years she presided over a restaurant called Bianchi's from which she retired when she turned 60. She came out of retirement to spend 10 years at L'Escargot, and retired again only to return for a stint at the Gay Hussar. When the company that now owns the Gay Hussar also bought L'Etoile on London's Charlotte Street, they changed its name to Elena's L'Etoile and enthroned her there where she still works, Mondays to Fridays. Last month she turned 84.

So you see, a restaurant institution, and with good reason. Here's an Elena story. A few years ago, a friend of mine took a date to L'Escargot. Halfway through dinner, patting his pockets, he realised he had forgotten his wallet. He shuffled in his seat, not sure what to do. He certainly wasn't going to mention it to the woman he was with. Elena tapped him on the shoulder and told him he had a phone call. When he got to the bar she said, 'You've forgotten your wallet, haven't you?' He had never met her before. My friend agreed that he had. She asked him for a business card, told him to pay her the next day and then said, 'Now go enjoy your dinner.' Elena's L'Etoile feels like the kind of place where that could also happen. She still bustles about, still takes most of the orders and clearly rules the room. When she is not taking orders, she has a bar stool by the door, where she perches, presumably on the watch for dopey men who have forgotten their wallets. It is a cheering, cheerful sort of place. The walls are a shade of nicotined magnolia that only decades of committed smoking could produce. They are lined with photographs of everyone from Ella Fitzgerald through Gene Wilder to Ginger Rogers. They may not have eaten here, but they did eat somewhere else on Elena's watch and the pictures are signed to her. Cheesy? Perhaps a little, but only if you have a heart of stone.

The food at L'Etoile is about as good as it needs to be: solid, uncomplicated, barely on nodding terms with fashion. So fish soup comes with croutons and rouille. And it may not be the sparkiest of fish soups or the most garlicky of rouilles but it's more than serviceable. The warm poached egg in a salad of chicory, asparagus and croutons is as soft-yolked as you would wish. Equally, a main course salmon fishcake is correct; big on salmon, short on bread or potato fillers, crisp outside and well-seasoned. My calf's liver in a sage crust was far better than that. The liver was thick cut, pink and very soft within as I had hoped, seared outside and came with some fine smoked bacon. Cheap? No, not really. But neither is any of it unexpectedly expensive.

At the bottom of the menu is an announcement which reads 'all main courses are served with a substantial garnish' and while I hate the word garnish, a celebration of superfluity, I do like the word 'substantial'. It seems very much to sum up the experience of eating here, too. You come to be fed and you get fed and all the dreary things - the snotty cold, the hedge, the paperwork, the ailing foot - seem a little less important and a little less worrying. That's what a good restaurant, and a good maitre d', should do for you. Happy birthday Elena.

· Jay Rayner will be live online on the Observer website to chat and answer questions on Monday 10 May at 3pm. Post your questions and comments at www.observer.co.uk/talk

· Elena's L'Etoile, 30 Charlotte Street, London W1 (020 7636 7189). Meal for two, including wine and service, £80