It would be much easier to write about Au Trou Normand if anything had changed there much in the past decade, let alone over the full 32 years since this legendary French restaurant opened. But luckily, or unluckily, depending on your perspective, the things that have made the place justly famous for so long remain unchanged. It is still, literally, a hole in the ground, a few steps below street level in a bright, noisy Tsim Sha Tsui back street. The entrance is slightly drab, the only hint of the class act to follow are the modestly placed half dozen or so consecutive Best Restaurant of the Year awards on the wall. The maitre d' at the door has a grubby old ledger full of reservations, and whisks customers smoothly into their seats, all with a kind of invisible efficiency that sets the tone for the whole evening. Menus arrived almost before we had a chance to sit down. On a mid-week day the place was about half full, and one got the feeling that the waiters are so slick that this leaves them with not enough to do. Everything in French is importantly uppercase on the menus, the English translation below in regular type, so there need be no embarrassment about not knowing your huitres from your crevettes, or your confit from your magret. And there is pretty much everything French country cooking is supposed to be about: succulent, self-indulgent hors d'oeuvre such as snails in garlic and goose liver terrine; specials like asparagus, and andouillette sausages, along with main courses that include frogs legs and roast lamb. The bored waiter tuned into our conversation and asked for our order in snappy, strongly accented French, and to give him something to do we quickly ordered oeufs meurette (poached eggs and ham in red wine sauce, $68) and magret de canard fume aux pommes chauds (smoked duck breast with sauted apple, $90) to start. There was only just time to choose from the exclusively French wine list - a half bottle of 1994 Brouilly ($170 - the only half bottle of beaujolais available) which was enjoyable but slightly young - before our first course arrived. Slices of duck were balanced around some finely chopped, undressed salad with a few tiny cubes of apple dropped carefully around the construction, and a sprinkling of red peppercorns. The slices were so fine there was scarcely any point in picking up a knife. The eggs were something of a rarity in amongst the more predictable offerings, poached but still runny, the cubes of French-style bacon a salty contrast to the mushrooms and tiny pickled onions. This time the circling waiters gave us time to mop up every drop before bringing on the next course. and finally, we had time to take in what was around us: red checked table clothes, greying paint, a few faded prints of old French cities, a towering grandfather clock, and a huge, redundant fireplace. They don't waste time on frills here, what has been good enough for the past 32 years is presumably going to be good enough for the next 32 as well. Bernard and Jenny Vigneau, who ran Au Trou Normand between 1966 and 1990, saw themselves not simply as restaurateurs but as unofficial ambassadors for their country in Hong Kong, and in their time, the clientele was largely French. While the food and the service remain unchanged, the ambience has undergone a slight shift. We were the only French people in the room, the majority being appreciative locals. Our main courses arrived - l'escalope de veau vallee d'auge (sauted veal with cream, mushroom and calvados sauce, $175) and tournedos grille bearnaise (grilled tenderloin served with bearnaise sauce, $175). The bearnaise, whipped up and spooned lovingly by yet another waiter out from a small tureen, is dandelion yellow and tastes good enough almost to eat on its own. The meat is lean and moist, cooked exactly well done as requested, and big enough to make the sauce look like an easy option. It comes with watercress and puffed potatoes, the cress bitter enough and the potatoes light enough to relieve the palate after all that cholesterol. The veal, accompanied by flat buttered noodles and a few steamed vegetables is a much finer flavour, the calvados just hinted at in the creamy sauce, and the mushrooms abundant. We have a salad ($58) and gratin dauphinois (potatoes gratin, $45) on the side, both of which were unnecessary in terms of appetite, but we finished them up anyway. The dauphinois - surely the best way to eat potato - was properly swimming in cream with a nice crunch to the topping and undercurrent of garlic. The salad, crunchy yellow-green lettuce, with the dressing prepared beside us by one of the prowling waiters, was pleasing without being special. It was only afterwards, when our original French speaking waiter reappeared and suggested dessert, that we realised how deceptively light all that food had been. Even so, we only had room for l'assortiments de sorbet fait maison, (home-made sherbets in four flavours, $45) and poire au vin rouge (pear in red wine, $55). The pear was purple and, to our relief, not too sweet. The homemade sorbet - strawberry, raspberry, lemon and melon flavoured - proved to be rather too much of a fruit cocktail and the only dish we left unfinished. We regret not sampling the cheese board, which included a dozen or so varieties, including brie, camembert, chevre, roblonchon, bleu and tom. The only real criticism was that the service was too rushed, which meant the whole meal was over in less than 90 minutes - which at $1,048.30 for the lot, including a mere half bottle of wine and mineral water, felt rather expensive. Not being in the mood to order any liqueurs, we couldn't think of any reason to linger although we wanted to. The charm of Au Trou Normand is partly that someone has taken the time to make sure everything works as it should, and we wanted to take our time appreciating that. Au Trou Normand, 6 Carnarvon Road, Tsim Sha Tsui. Tel: 2366 8754. Open for lunch: 12 noon-3pm; dinner: 7pm-11pm seven days a week
