They tried to take quiche off the menu one day. "Oh, there was uproar," laughs Patricia Hogan of the consternation that afternoon sometime in the late 1980s. "We thought maybe people would be sick of it, that we'd try something different. But they didn't know whether they were coming or going. We put it back on the next day."

Quiche, you see, was quite outre when Patricia Hogan and Ann McCarthy opened Mitchell's Cellar Restaurant in Dublin's Kildare Street 21 years ago, and though fads have come and gone, governments have risen and fallen and restaurants have opened and closed, Mitchell's and its quiche have been a staple that Dublin's diners had come to rely on.

The tables of dark varnished wood and the red-checked lampshades were still in place last week, though Ms Hogan and Ms McCarthy were packing away their own memories of the cavernous diningroom.

"We took over the franchise when Peter Dunne - who was running Mitchell's wine shop upstairs - told us that Mitchell's were thinking of opening a restaurant," says Ms Hogan.

Up until the mid-1970s, the wine shop had used its cellars to bottle and rack the wine they imported in barrels. However, as then EEC law stipulated that all wine should be bottled at the source vineyards, the cellar became vacant. It was then the Cathal Brugha Street graduates were asked if they'd take on a new restaurant.

"Well, we thought it would be quiet on the first day, but God!," laughs Ms McCarthy, "there was a queue up the stairs and on to the street. It was mad. You see, there was nothing really like it. It was Dublin's first wine bar, where you'd get something other than chicken and chips, and at a reasonable price."

Dublin's latest restaurateurs couldn't make enough lasagne or mousaka to satisfy demand; they served up "luscious deserts like pavlova and roulades when the norm was apple tart and ice-cream" and proudly, they tell they have never served a chip. The emphasis though, says Mr Dunne, was on the good glass of wine. The arrangement between shop and restaurant worked well, with the women selling and taking the profits from the food, while the shop supplied and sold, with a low mark-up, the wine.

The late 1970s and early 1980s was a bouyant time economically and people were hungry for the kind of atmosphere Mitchell's offered. Attracted were "government ministers, PR consultants, journalists, wheelers and dealers, the ladies who lunch", recalls Ms Horgan. "We've spanned a generation, seen some things, I can tell you. I wish we'd kept a diary."

They recall a particularly fractious time in politics - that of the forming of the last Fianna FailPD coalition. While either faction dined at opposite ends of the cellar, Fianna Fail's Joe Walshe shuttled between. Ms Hogan has a hunch that perhaps Mitchell's help feed that alliance.

In his role as sommelier, Liam Maher can testify some fine wines have been served. He particularly remembers a bottle of Chateau Pont et Canet 1961, which he opened last year for a Scandinavian customer. Mr Maher himself bottled it from a barrel in the cellar in 1963, and was happy to taste from the £100-plus bottle.

"It tasted great," he smiles.

Ms Horgan and Ms McCarthy are retiring to allow greater investment expansion and the opportunity for someone to open the restaurant in the evenings. They will embark on new projects in the autumn. They hope nothing too radical happens to the old place.

And one suspects that the hundreds who have flocked to bid farewell over the past weeks may well measure the new owners by one thing alone. What else, but calibre of their quiche?

Selling agents, Lisney, are quoting a guideline rent of £45,000 per annum and a minimum premium of £40,000 for the new lease.