Restaurants

Named after the street urchin from Les Misérables, the 42-year-old Le Gavroche made its founders, the Roux Brothers, internationally famous. Today it lies in the hands of chef-patron Michel Roux Jr, and head chef Rachel Humphrey who joined the establishment as an apprentice in 1996. Despite such modern ideas as women in the kitchen, the decor and service are reassuringly traditional. A first-floor bar with red leather and tartan seating is lined with red moire fabric walls; the basement restaurant is clad in dark green, with Picasso drawings among the unobtrusive modern art. Waiters and porters go about their much-practised business with urgent confidence, announcing dishes with a flourish of silver domes. Sommeliers happily talk customers through possibilities from the wine tome which, though starting under £20, naturally includes some mind-boggling extravagances. The nine-course menu exceptionnel can be ordered with or without matching wines; its most tempting dishes also appear on the lengthy à la carte. The classic soufflé suissesse that helped make the restaurant so famous when it first opened on Lower Sloane Street in 1967 (the dish then cost 19 shillings and served two) doesn’t disappoint, floating pertly on its double-cream sauce. More contemporary was a dish of very thinly sliced braised octopus, crowned with a deep-fried soft-shell crab and surrounded by a chopped tomato and coriander salad; its lime and oil dressing prompted us to pick up the sauce spoon to catch every last drop. Baked veal sweetbread came with a deliciously sticky sauce of the teensiest diced apple and calvados. Desserts can hit the price of main courses, but we’d no regrets about ordering the sugar rush of hot passion-fruit soufflé with white chocolate ice-cream. This is one old boy for which it’s worth dressing up and splashing out.

Time Out Eating & Drinking Guide 2009