Whatever would Bridget think?

In the light of global terrorism, the state of the health service and the price of property in the capital, the closure on Saturday night of my local wine bar hardly warrants mentioning. Yet, for me, 3 February 2002 will be forever etched in my mind as the day the neighbourhood died.

Most residents of Notting Hill will insist they were here long before the yuppies, bankers, media magnates and fashionistas arrived, but if you don't remember 192 opening, your credibility has to be questioned. For once I was in the right place at the right time. I arrived in 1980 to a squat on Stoneleigh Street on the very edge of W11. One street further and I'd have ended up in W10. Aged 16 and fresh off the Dun Laoghaire to Holyhead ferry, how could I know how close to social suicide I'd come?

In 1982 the culinary needs of local residents were met by a smattering of cafès, pubs and a now-defunct tapas bar. Then 192 arrived. A veritable Mecca for the gastronomically destitute residents of Notting Hill. When the restaurant materialised on Kensington Park Road in the bleak winter of 1982 it was as if someone had left the pearly gates ajar. We locals flooded in to marvel at the sunny colour scheme, the glass stairwell, the fine wines from a distant continent we had once sent convicts to and the exciting arrival of the celebrity set.

They were heady days. Bertolucci held court in a corner, Mick and Jerry enjoyed romantic dinners ? deux, Charlie Glass shared hair-raising tales about captivity in Beirut, Salman Rushdie risked Iranian assassins for a bite with his friends and Lucian Freud entertained his young daughters.

The reinvention of Notting Hill as a ghetto for the rich, fashionable and famous is often credited to Richard Curtis and his movie Notting Hill. I beg to differ. When four local residents - Tony Mackintosh, Tchaik Chassey, Ben Wordsworth and John Armit - created a local diner for themselves, they unlocked the floodgates.

One of the many things 192 got right was giving local customers the VIP treatment which, in other establishments, became the sole preserve of famous tourists and those who book a year in advance.

Small wonder it was immortalised by Helen Fielding in her Bridget Jones diaries. As a struggling journo, it was one of the few glamorous places you could get a table without grovelling to Terence Conran or mugging someone for a private reservation line.

By all rights when the money disappeared after Black Monday, 192 too should have lost its sparkle. The prices were no longer as minimal as the surroundings, the toilets had started to look distinctly shabby and the once intimate room had tripled in size. Still we flocked through the door.

Over the years the food has been good, bad and indifferent. I once spent an evening with Mick Jagger playing hunt the duck in a pile of garnish. We also returned three bottles of wine that were off. But a week later we were back - lured by convenience and the bonhomie of a neighbourhood restaurant that never believed its own press.

Now with the Asian fusion menu at E&O next door attracting the arrivistes, and Westbourne Grove fast becoming the new Knightsbridge, I admit that 192 had probably had its day.