Chosen by the Roux Brothers in 1967 as the name of their first and most famous restaurant Le Gavroche, still stands as the symbol of their success, the gamin's bedraggled wide eyed state contraindicating the promise of excellent cuisine and unparalleled service that marks each of Les Roux's hugely successful ventures.

".. Native of Normandy, she has stilled in us the taste for real cuisine; simple, hearty, accented with the earth of our beautiful France. One approaches good eating and this is what we have done since childhood under the guidance of our Mother 'it is a life of happiness that awaits one' in doing so.

This filial dedication is recognition of a mother's role in inspiring in her sons a fundamental appreciation of le gout, of 'real' food that owes much of its goodness to the source of its nurturing. From this early education evolved an appreciation of Classic French cooking; the grand haute cuisine style which brothers Michel and Albert Roux would develop into the art of which they have become acknowledged masters, and teachers in themselves.

World's away from their picturesque village in France's Saone et Loire district, the Roux have taken with them the heart and soul of their birthplace to the smart streets of London, where they arrived as culinary missionaries and today reign as gastronomic deities.

Since 1967, their flagship restaurant , le Gavroche, named for the Victor Hugo's widened urchin whose name passed into usage in everyday French after his appearance in Les Miserables has instilled in the English an understanding of fine cuisine, of the experience of fine dining and of the standards that are attainable through an uncompromising attitude and a commitment akin to divine faith. From this first venture, has grown a culinary empire, from patisseries and catering a companies, to accommodations and of course, more restaurants.

The culinary meditations of Albert and Michel have achieved the highest accolades, from such titles as Officers du Merite Agricole, Restaurteurs of the Year in Britain , the revered Three-Star rating from the biblical Michelin Guide.

Indeed, in all of Britain there are only two restaurants that are deemed worthy of this rare rating. Le Gavroche is one and the other is The Waterside Inn and both these celebrated establishments belong to the Roux brothers. But perhaps the greatest irony is that neither Albert nor Michel had ever worked in a restaurant proper prior to the establishment of Le Gavroche. "I had always worked for very rich people in private service as had Michel" says Albert.

"When I first came to England I didn't understand a word of English: I worked in a kitchen.

The 'kitchen' was in the household of a member of one of Britain's great aristocratic dynasties and the lady of the house was the celebrated society hostess and heiress, Lady Nancy Astor. A staff of four manned the kitchen, with the young Albert working as commis cook. "As a young French lad, I simply could not believe it. I had my own room and my own bathroom, chicken for lunch. It was simply a dream!"

The young Frenchman found himself in the middle of a grandiose theatre, one of twenty-seven servants employed in the Lady's service. "It was just like the movies. The film "Upstairs Downstairs" was based upon Lady Astor, and it is true" it was exactly that. I watched the film and I could actually see myself as a youngster in the basement downstairs."

Roux developed his talents in a unique ambience, preparing a small omelette and a bouillon des legumes if the mistress was supping alone; or working at a frantic pace when a host of guests was invited for a sumptuous grand banquet. It was also an environment of extremes in the British psyche, visually apparent in the Nation's attitude to dining. "In those days England was a gastronomic desert. A very privileged few lived well and the rest of the nation fed themselves like one puts petrol into a car, the car runs, that's it!

"When we were growing up, it was completely different. We came from a humble but proud family where lunch and dinner were ritual at the table. During the war there was very little in the way of food but my mother was very imaginative. My father would bless the bread and on the table were the rewards of his labour, so it would be cherished and honoured."

Both Brothers' association with the gentry continued through their careers. Michel worked as a chef in the British Embassy in Paris and was appointed Chef de Cuisine for Mademoiselle Cecile de Rothschild whilst across 'La Manche' Albert was in the employ of the French Embassy and later worked for a powerful financier, Sir Charles Clore, before settling down in Kent. "It was a lovely estate of 1800 acres, belonging to Major Peter Cazelet, who was the official horse trainer of the Royal Family. He was a very wealthy gentleman and we were very well looked after. I stayed with him for nine years.

Perfecting his cuisine for the aristocracy in the most idyllic of surroundings, Albert Roux established his reputation as a master Chef and when the doors of Le Gavroche opened, it was not so much a restaurant as a private club for Barons and Earls.

"When I started Le Gavroche, the people who would come to dine were the same people for whom we cooked in private service; it was the gentry. Now of course, we have changed our clientele and the spectrum is far wider. We have a taxi driver for instance, who comes in with his wife each year to celebrate his birthday. It is much nicer now, there is a greater appreciation of good food, but it has been a slow evolution. You see, there is no English cuisine as such. There is English speciality; dishes that are delectable when they are nicely cooked but they have been bastardised; accommodated to modern times. Mind you, so have many of our national dishes in France. The only thing left of them is the name.

Roux attributes the new awareness of food to the cult of inexpensive travel. "I think the packaged holiday started to develop the taste buds. It is like everything in life; there has to be an evolution and sometimes it is quite slow. It started with the pizza and the paella; Greek food, a little bit of American and whatever else they encountered... People came back with those ideas and they slowly graduated to better cuisine. I think the supermarket also had a lot to do with it. People started to see prepared meat and other dishes on the shelves and they began to see the possibilities. "In Victorian times people would never talk about food; it simply was not proper. Now they are a nation that loves its food and its drink. There is a much wider audience now."

For his audience of patrons, Roux's creation of dishes is a bravura performance, borne of an elegantly refined philosophy. "In developing my recipes, I spend a lot of time in picking the ingredients. I take beautiful raw materials and then do as little as possible with them. It is not unlike a beautiful woman. She will not spend hours in front of the mirror pondering her face; she will touch it lightly to enhance the delicate features and I think this is extremely important. The mixture of the herbs and condiments; to know how to combine them so that you finish up with a happy marriage of flavours, colours and textures. So many restaurants destroy their ingredients. You order foie de boeuf and they put things on it and you know it foie de boeuf only because they tell you it is and you have to believe them. That is the difference," he stresses. "That is where the art is".

The art has developed, as have all arts from primitive forms and peasant rituals into all manner of styles and schools of thought with their attendant gurus and spokespersons, critics and theorists, and it is now returning to its origins in what is being euphemistically labelled 'Mother's Cooking'.

"Cuisine has gone from traditional French to a more modern French, to a bit of Chinese here and a bit of Japanese there, then everyone cooking a lot lighter and calling it Nouvelle. The food writers were happy to dabble in it and make it a cause celebre. But I have never believed it, there is nothing nouvelle in it. In fact, I believe it has caused a lot of damage to our national heritage. People will tell you they had a cassoulet that was so light; unbelievably light. Well, I don't want a light cassoulet; it's beans, sausage, pieces of duck. I have to be filled up with it."

Such a purist stance from the Roux brothers, whose first published collection of recipes and methodology appeared at the height of the Nouvelle mode with its cheeky title, 'New Classic Cuisine', saw them become the bad boys of French cuisine, but fashions invariable fade and the Roux have watched as the food scribes became converts to the earthier brand of cuisine the Brothers have been advocating all along.

An early convert to the Roux tradition was Albert's son, Michel, who has been in the kitchen for as long as he can remember. "I was brought up in the kitchen, probably even born there," he says in not too mock seriousness. "My uncle Michel also has a son and he's a chef too. It's in the family. I have a very strong image. I don't know what age I was but I was very young and my father was working for the Queen Mother's horse trainer. I remember churning ice cream, turning the handle of a wooden bucket, and after about half an hour being told to churn faster. That's what drew me to cooking."

Michel more or less followed in the footsteps of his father and his uncle, completing an apprenticeship in a Parisian pattisserie before crossing the Channel for a two year tenure to work with the late master Alain Chapel. The mandatory military service in France took him out of the kitchen and on his return he was cooking for people that would impress even his father's retinue; Presidents of the Republic, Giscard D'Estaing and Mitterand.

For the past few years, Michel has worked alongside his father at Le Gavroche, embracing the Roux commitment to excellence and helping to guide it into the next generation. Michel's father is watchful but confident in his son's abilities. "It's extremely difficult to step into something that is established. He has to discover and develop his own ideas which he does with the daily specials menu and I can see this slowly happening. I'm very happy."

Michel admits to a classical taste but sees the opportunities to bring fresh ideas to Roux cuisine. "I have new products available that can be used in the classical form that my father couldn't use; such things as avocadoes certain fruits and vegetables that were not available then but are now and can be treated in a classical form. Personally, I have also developed a taste for sweet and sour and spices as I worked for a time in Asia. My father doesn't like it very much but ... we will definitely keep our cuisine traditional."

"For your own sake," adds Albert, "you have to question a menu but there is only so much you can do to a dish before you kill it. And of course people are coming back to the cooking style of the mother. This is something we have always done and it has been vindicated. There are very few three-star restaurants and it is an extremely difficult rating to get, especially for restaurants outside of France. "

If England seems an unlikely place for Roux to have pursued his art, the young Frenchman was attracted by its openness. "I simply fell in love with the country, with its democracy, its respect for institutions and for other peoples' beliefs. It was punch chance that I first came to England, when I heard there was a job available, but I don't really believe in luck. I think you need opportunity but I also believe you need to see opportunity and to work at it. It was always my ambition to open a restaurant. Twenty-four years ago I opened the first Le Gavroche in Lower Sloane Street, but I knew I would never achieve a three-star rating in those premises. The kitchen was in the basement so the food had to go into a lift, off the lift, onto a warmer; there was a lot happening to the food between its leaving the kitchen and getting to the customers.

In 1981, Roux moved Le Gavroche to an elegant Edwardian building in Mayfair and within a space of six months the restaurant had been granted the highest culinary distinction, a third Michelin star.

The restaurant together with The Waterside Inn which is under the creative guidance of Albert's brother, Michel, maintains a consistency of cuisine at the highest level. The Roux brothers consider all clients VIPs, believing that a love of fine food puts one into the gourmet class although Albert emphasises that in superior restaurants patrons like to be guided. "We do take quite a lot of time to explain the dishes and to show and to try and find what will excite people. After all, it is not everyday most people will go to a three-star restaurant. It is an occasion.

Echoing the days when le Gavroche was almost exclusively a retreat for the wealthy and titled. "We've always maintained a sort of secrecy about our clients; they come here to get away. There was an evening when one of our customers was dining with a lady and his wife appeared downstairs with someone else. He was very appreciative. He left very quickly.

In certain circles a social faux pas is unthinkable and the attitude of Roux's staff can best be described as grace at all times even in the face of such social adversity. At the restaurant's old premises a patron fell asleep during dinner. "He was English and his wife left him in disgust. Of course no one disturbed him and about two hours later - it was one thirty in the morning - he suddenly woke up and said, 'More coffee and for my wife too.' There was another evening when we had a table of eight Japanese businessmen. Another man came in later and they all bowed four or five times; he must have been the Managing Director or the owner of the company. He looked extremely tired, he must have just flown in, and he fell asleep. Nobody disturbed him. His nose was touching his plate of food and he was deep in sleep. Well, we served the main course; we didn't serve him, and he woke up at coffee. I thought he was going to be very embarrassed but he joined the conversation and there was no mention of him sleeping. That is etiquette. I was very impressed by that. The Japanese have impeccable table manners.

Albert is enamoured of his worked, delighting in the pleasures of both the table and his patrons, pushing himself in his perpetual quest for perfection and like any artist driven by his vision; a tableau full of details; "Serving wine so the customer hasn't seen the wine being served, or the ashtrays being changed, plates of food like perfect strokes of the brush. The magic of Le Gavroche is a combination of the food and the service; the two aspects working in harmony. It is perfection."

A perfection reaching back to a humble kitchen in the Saone valley, where a mother concocted a simple, earthy food for her two young boys. As the boys penned in a collection of recipes, aptly titled, 'The Roux Brothers French Country Cooking'*: "It is to her that we dedicate our craft. Today, as she approaches eighty, she still knows that we derive pleasure from recipes that she has bequeathed us for our work.