Le Gavroche will close for lunch on Tuesdays and bring last orders forward to 9.30pm to reduce working hours following a newspaper report that it paid kitchen staff as little as £5.50 a hour.

According to the The Guardian, several chefs at Michel Roux’s gastronomic bastion in Mayfair said they routinely worked between 62 and 68 hours a week for about £375 before tax, well below the £7.20 national living wage.

A spokeswoman for the restaurant admitted to the paper that some staff – “fewer than a dozen” – had been paid less than the living wage. She said there would be immediate pay rises for those effected and reduced hours for all employees.

By March 2017, she said, Le Gavroche will “reduce the maximum estimated working hours for all to 50 hours a week”.

In February this year Roux announced that the restaurant would be closing on Mondays to reduce working hours and make the kitchen a better place to work.

Set up by the Roux brothers Albert (Michel junior’s father) and Michel in 1967, Le Gavroche has been hailed by the Harden’s Survey as a “flawless and indulgent treat” – offering “the best-value set lunch ever”.