Legendary family taste

Leafing through a catering industry mag, I was stopped in my tracks by a particular restaurant. It had been open for about four months and was on my list of places to cover. It was already up for sale.

London chews up restaurants and spews them out like a contemptuous bulimic. So a restaurant that has chalked up 40 years in the business, while maintaining a dining room as hard to get into as Madonna's lilac leotard, is little short of astonishing. Congratulations, Le Gavroche.

For a big hitter, it's remarkably lowkey. Second-generation chef Michel Roux (who took over from papa Albert in 1991) pops up on TV every now and then but he's no attention-seeking slebrity chef.

Maybe it's this lack of grandstanding that made it slip off my radar but it's an oversight that has niggled for years. Could the Queen Mum, Margaret Thatcher and, er, Jon Bon Jovi all know something I don't? How could I overlook a place that had nurtured both Big Sweary Gordon and nemesis Marco Pierre White in its bosom? One that allegedly banned Michael Winner?

A place that could be accurately described as London's first temple of haut gastronomy, the first in Britain to win one, two and finally three Michelin stars (losing the third two years after Albert handed over to Michel)?

So this anniversary offers the perfect excuse to visit. And here we are, at the understated entrance, all ready to sing a rousing 'happy 40th birthday to you'. Except this is most emphatically not that kind of place. It's sombre, overstuffed, clubby, relentlessly grown-up. Apart from some preternaturally groomed teenagers (jackets are mandatory), our fellow diners are very middle-aged. And quite a lot of them are very American.

You enter via the bar: a carmined, picture-lined, awkwardly shaped snug. With its conservative demeanour and odd frolicsome touches (faux bamboo a go-go), it looks as though it's been designed by Christine Hamilton. The only table available to us in the large, plush basement dining room is at 10pm; by this time the suave staff start to look a little frayed and our amuses - a pert chorizo in fine pastry and some fridgecold-blue cheese mousse on a crouton - are plonked in front of us.

Downstairs, the joint is jumping. We're shown to the worst table in the house: facing the far wall, next to the kitchen's constantly swinging doors. Fortunately, the food makes up for our personal Siberia. M Roux junior may have lightened the menu since its early, butterladen days, but this is no place to worry about calories. Take my starter, the legendary SoufflÈ Suissesse, a feature since Day One. This awesome construction - like a savoury floating island - combines ethereal, meringuey lightness with enough GruyËre and cream to harden the most elastic of arteries. Oh, but it's gorgeous.

The dubious taste continues: each table brandishes a weird, metal sculpture - ours a lugubrious bird, but we could have had what looked like a toad - available to buy for a cool couple of grand a pop. You can also purchase Le Gavroche cutlery, with handles depicting the titular urchin; plates with caricatures of Michel Roux; ashtrays; ties; badges... No loot-parting opportunity is missed.

More stellar food removes any residual bad taste. A lobe of rich, melting foie is seared into lacquered luxury; it comes with a cinnamon-scented pancake of superbly ducky duck. We decide to share suckling pig - Pietrain pig from Perche, Normandy, fed on apples and pears; it is a ravishing piece of meat, gilded with a slightly sweet peppered sauce dotted with fat, succulent golden raisins and voluptuous confit shallots. The crackling is ambrosial, shattering like toffee, but incredibly packed with flavour: the Prada of pork scratchings.