ANYONE who watched Michel Roux Jnr’s Service, will know that first impressions count – particularly in the cut-throat restaurant trade.

No diner wants to be met by a surly hostess or a waiter struggling to find their booking in the diary; or be ignored by staff as they try to settle up at the end of the night.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. The best restaurants are those where the front of house runs as smoothly as the kitchen; food and service operating in perfect harmony.

Elena Salvoni has spent 70 years making sure the restaurants she worked in ran like a well-oiled machine, where guests were made to feel welcome, almost part of the family.

And what guests. She worked in Soho in the heart of London, where actors, film stars, impresarios, divas, politicians and Royals were among her regulars, many becoming firm friends.

Elena is on tour, sharing stories from her amazing career with audiences of chefs, restaurateurs, catering students and food journalists. She is 91 in April, and only retired last year. Not fully, though. She still hosts a lunch at Little Italy in Soho every second Wednesday of the month.

This week, she had a date in Harrogate, at the Hotel Du Vin. She walked into the room smartly dressed in a grey skirt and blouse, gently leaning on a walking stick. Apart from an arthritic knee, she is fit and well.

Elena was born in England, from Italian parents. She speaks fluent Italian, and English as if a cockney accent had been put through a cappuccino machine. She pronounces her name the English way, like Eleanor, but without the final ‘r’.

Elena started working in London during the war, at Café Bleu in Old Compton Street. The war years were hard, she recalls, and not only because of the bombs; most Italian restaurateurs, chefs and waiters were interned once Mussolini sided with Hitler.

The restaurant was bombed out during the Blitz, as was the neighbourhood. Amazingly, her house remained standing. “The home next door was burned to the ground. You could hardly enter our house because of the heat. The garden looked like a Christmas scene. Everything was hanging on the trees; people’s furniture, their clothes and belongings. The windows in our house had been blown out.”

That night, Elena and her family had a lucky escape. They chose to shelter in the underground at Angel Islington rather than accept an offer from a local priest to take cover in his presbytery. “The presbytery got burned to the ground,” says Elena. “Oh my god. If we had gone in there, I wouldn’t be here now.”

Elena talks about the great and the good who graced the various restaurants she worked at over the years with warmth in her voice, as if talking about friends.

She is not boastful, but displays a mischievous faux modesty, prefixing her anecdotes with “I don’t like to name names,” then goes on to tell the stories we all want to hear. Such as when John Hurt was drunk and rude to her, but she forgave him because “he was like a son to me”.

Or how Elaine Paige became like a daughter over the years and Ella Fitzgerald became such a friend that she summoned Elena’s newborn grandson to her dressing room before a concert at the Albert Hall – then sang him a lullaby.

Later that night Ella’s band came into the restaurant and said to Elena: “I don’t know what that baby did to Ella, but when she came out, she brought the house down.”

Other regulars included Prince Andrew and Fergie. Princess Diana also visited, as did the Pythons, Robert De Niro, Sean Connery and Peter O’Toole.

Elena tells the story how at the newly opened L’Etoile, she had to ask owner Roy Ackerman if he would mind giving up a table so she could squeeze in four just-arrived guests.

Roy, who is accompanying Elena on her tour, continues the story: “Elena said she needed the table next to me where I had placed my bottle of wine. It was for Gene Wilder and Mel Brookes and their wives. I said of course,” then turns to Elena to smile. “They could have had the whole restaurant, we’d only been open two weeks.”

Elena, who has already written a cookbook and memoir about her life, Eating Famously, is keen to pass on the secrets of her success to young people, giving out tips on how to make it in the cut-throat restaurant trade.

“Make it a rich life, enjoy it,” she begins. “Go to catering college and get a proper training. You have got to enjoy being with people. Make them feel welcome.

“Don’t shout at any other staff in the restaurant, speak to them outside. If people tell you something for your ears only, don’t repeat it.

“If I was young again I would start over and do it all again tomorrow,” says Elena.

“The things that have happened in my life I can hardly believe – I will have to write another book.”