If you like your stories simple, then dismiss news of the impending closure of Le Gavroche as nothing more than a small, painful rupture in Mayfair’s luxe economy. A restaurant, famed for its cream-boosted soufflé suissesse and its butter poached lobster, where the bill for dinner will break £150 a head without pausing for breath, shuts its doors in January after 56 years. People with deep pockets, big appetites and a taste for the old things done very well, will mourn.
I’m one of them. I was fortunate to attend a couple of Gavroche events, where there was no bill. But I was also equally fortunate to be able to slap down the plastic and wait for it to combust in payment for my own dinner. I never begrudged a penny of it, for woodcock served in the traditional style, or an Omelette Rothschild, as fluffy and sweet as an icing sugar-dusted summer cloud. The three-course lunch deal (ended by staffing issues related both to Brexit and the pandemic) was famously one of the best value in London. I have always loved the hilariously plump room; a space that held the world at bay. Chef-patron Michel Roux, who took over from his father 34 years ago, lightened the food but somehow managed to keep Le Gavroche very much itself.
