Two old-timers get to grips with the customer

On the one hand we have Paris stalwart “Prunier Restaurant (depuis 1872)” and on the other we have the ”River Restaurant at the Savoy” (a relative newcomer,  founded in 1889). Both these venerable restaurants have made a good job of getting under the skin of their customers during more than  a century of boom and bust.  They are both fighting fit and have recently brought off the difficult trick of relaunching while still retaining the feel and tone of their glory years. For those of us obsessed with food and restaurants they make an interesting case study – what kind of a menu do you write to tempt the 21^st Century diner?

The Prunier restaurant is on Avenue Victor Hugo and occupies  the site of the original fishmonger, it gradually morphed into a  respected fish restaurant in the hands of Emile Prunier  (his great, if gnomic, utterance was that “Everything comes from the sea” a saying worthy of Eric Cantona). In the 1930’s the restaurant was run by Madame Prunier and now after many twists and turns it finds itself a part of the Caviar House Group. This is  a very beautiful  restaurant, even if you are not a firm fan of the Art Deco period it is hard not to be impressed by the elegant, formal design and rich colour ways. It’s also hard to remain unimpressed in the presence of a heated handrail on the stairwell – I never knew that I needed one, but now there’s a twinge of disappointment at anywhere with less luxurious features and fittings. The private rooms at Prunier are exceptional and so is the cooking of the current head chef Eric Coisel. Don’t get me wrong, this is old-fashioned, classic stuff… it’s just that it eats very well.  At a recent lunch in the Salon Traktir (a magnificent private room) to celebrate the facsimile reprinting of the Prunier fish cookery book, we started with a rock oyster on a tartare of sea bass and topped with a dollop of Prunier’s caviar – farmed in the Aquitaine. Then there was a scallop and sole recipe that featured in  the 1938 cookery book.  Then a fantastic dish of sheeps’ trotters à la Poulette.  Finally a Bordeaux style fricandeau of sturgeon the recipe for which came from Michel Bouzy’s 1929 Prunier cookbook. The sturgeon was astonishingly good, far and away the best sturgeon dish I have tried – rich, meaty, a pronounced flavour.  Finally Emile Prunier’s “petit pots de crème”.  Magnificent food, quality fish, exotic ingredients aplenty. But such luxury comes at quite a price: a piece of turbot costs €77 (£66). Oysters can cost €5 (£4.50) each. Or there is three course menu at €65 (£56). Good food, great setting, wallet trampling bill.

In the 1890’s the Savoy Hotel restaurant could claim Cezar Ritz as the front of house and his pal August Escoffier in the kitchens. Then, as now, this was pretty much a dream team.  The River Restaurant has a distinguished history but in recent times it has always been the rather more ordinary of the hotel’s eating places with the Grill Room having the swank and the celebrity customers. After the long and anxious refurb with the self-inflicted wound of a fly-on-the-wall television series focussing on every weakness, about a year ago Fairmont re-opened the Savoy to suitable fanfares. The sleek new bar (The Beaufort) stacks up well against the smaller, plainer American Bar; the Grill Room blends old and new,  trying to do something different while keeping the carving trolley for die-hard customers. The River Restaurant poses something of a quandary – do you go ultra trad and feature Escoffier’s classics – “cuisses des nymphes Aurora”  a.k.a. frogs’ legs, or due you turn your back on the past.  Canadian born James Pare is the second man to head up the new glossy River Restaurant since refurb and his menu follows a tortuous path there is an Escoffier menu but the dishes are modernist interpretations of the great man’s dishes. Thus you can tuck into quail consommé; “sole Victoria”; lamb noisettes “fines herbes; salad mignon and peach Melba.  The main Carte features dishes that  seem familiar and sometimes staid. There’s extensive use of expensive ingredients – yellow fin tuna; loin of venison; foie gras; Dover sole; veal chop; turbot.

These dishes are all well made, technically perfect cooking  and beautiful to look at on the plate. But to be a cutting edge restaurant in a City like London you need to deliver originality and excitement and the River Restaurant majors in gravitas at the expense of surprises. With one glaring exception – the Desserts, if the mains can seem reliable rather than revolutionary you’ll find more than enough flights of fancy on the dessert list. A liquorice crème brulée; a warm chocolate orange moelleux with salted caramel ice cream; or the Opalys white chocolate jelly sphere ivoire red fruit cremeux, raspberry hibiscus ice cream.  You can even enjoy  a coup de Theatre as the hot chocolate sauce melts the cold chocolate dome and it implodes (a grandstander I first saw at Petrus).  After the sensible mains these desserts are spooky and startling. Prices are uncompromising the Escoffier menu weighs in at £72.50, à la Carte starters £9 to £18; mains £20 to £34; and those sparky desserts £11. It is doubtless true that the River Room sees itself as part of the establishment but to sustain a good reputation restaurants must look forward as much as they look back.

Prunier Restaurant, 16, Avenue Victor Hugo, 75016 Paris [+33 (0) 1 44 17 35 85  www.prunier.com]

The River Restaurant, Savoy Hotel, the Strand, London WC2R 0EU [020 7836 4343 www.fairmont.com/savoy]