Robert Treboux | N.Y. restaurateur, 87

NEW YORK - Robert Treboux, 87, the owner of the venerable Manhattan bistro Le Veau d'Or and one of the last of the influential chefs and restaurant owners who came out of Le Pavillon and put their stamp on fine dining in New York for decades, died Wednesday in Manhattan. His death was confirmed by his daughter Catherine Treboux.

Mr. Treboux bought Le Veau d'Or in 1985, capping a long culinary career in New York. After waiting on tables in the 1950s at Le Pavillon, the legendary restaurant that epitomized formal French cuisine, he opened several highly regarded restaurants of his own before acquiring Le Veau d'Or, a tiny bistro on East 60th Street that dates to 1937.

In its heyday, from the 1940s through the 1960s, Le Veau d'Or (French for "The Golden Calf") counted among its patrons Orson Welles, Marlene Dietrich, Grace Kelly, and Oleg Cassini. By the time Mr. Treboux took it over, it had settled into a dignified old age, supported by a fiercely loyal, older clientele who loved its unbending traditionalism and adored Mr. Treboux for refusing to change its menu, its decor or its highly personal style of management.

In The United States of Arugula, his history of modern food trends, David Kamp called the restaurant "an extraordinary time warp." It was, he wrote, "the last place in New York where you can still get uncompromised Escoffier cuisine and have your roast carved tableside by a man who worked directly under Soule."

For Mr. Treboux, "time warp" counted as high praise. "We want to keep it what it is, which is what people want," he told the New York Sun in 2006. Diners in search of trends, he suggested, could go "to other places that have the plate with the little bit of food in the middle."

In addition to his daughter Catherine, Mr. Treboux is survived by his wife, Julienne; another daughter, Dominique Treboux; a brother; and four grandchildren. - N.Y. Times News Service