He has sliced rare cheeses and soothed big ones.

The guest who had a heart ­attack — and the diners who grumbled that those sorts of medical hassles disrupt service. The notorious rock star who spoke so eloquently about wine. The decades-long customers, regulars since they were a young couple, who returned for a meal with a granddaughter.

After 34 years as maître d’ and fromager at L’Espalier, Louis Risoli, 64, has seen and served them all. Most of all, he has presided over a vanishing foodscape where unhurried service and all-out luxury seems quaint. New York City had its Walter Weiss and Elaine Kaufman; ­Boston had Risoli.

His reign over one of Boston’s last bastions of couth ended with his retirement this month, harkening the end of an era in Boston dining.

“If you came in a year or two ago, then came back again, he’d remember your name, the last time you dined with us, and if you had an anniversary or birthday. He has an extraordinary memory for dates and names,’’ says L’Espalier chef-proprietor Frank McClelland, who estimates that Risoli worked about 55 hours per week.

L’Espalier service director Federico Salvador and fromager Matt Helvitz will replace him, though Risoli will host Tuesday night cheese-tastings through September.

“We knew this day was coming, so we put in place really outstanding individuals to carry on,’’ McClelland says.

They have big shoes to fill. This is, after all, a man with a vast reference book of cheeses and a sixth sense of not only what cheese to serve but also the finely honed instinct to know when a diner needs just a little more attention.

“A week doesn’t go by where he doesn’t have to do something extraordinary to bring someone back to happiness,’’ McClelland says. Plus, McClelland added later without a hint of hyperbole, “He’s become a leader in cheese worldwide.’’

It’s a long way from his days as a dishwasher at the erstwhile Harvard Square hangout Ferdinand’s, where he worked his way up to maître d’.

Ten years later, he arrived at L’Espalier, where he served politicians, tycoons, and celebratory everymen, both at the restaurant’s Gloucester Street town house and later in bigger environs in the Mandarin Oriental, Boston hotel.

“L’Espalier is a very special place for people. It’s a haven. I know so many people who have come for their anniversary or a birthday and have done this for over 20 years. It’s a real obligation,’’ Risoli says.

He treated them all with deference and calm, although as a child of the 1960s, the rock stars made him a bit giddy, he admits. He waited on the likes of Elvis Costello, Roger Daltrey, Ringo Starr — and a “pleasant, friendly’’ Mick Jagger, who feasted on halibut and Sagne-Montrachet.

“He knows his cheese. He knows his wine. He knows his food. He was sophisticated and not pompous,’’ Risoli says.

A man of wealth and taste, indeed. But while the VIPs trickled in year after year, the state of dining shifted and evolved over three decades, Risoli says.

“Expectations have risen over time, as they should. Food is better in Boston now than it has ever been. Service is better. Dining out has a more prominent place in people’s lives than it once did — nobody cooks anymore!’’ he says with a laugh. “That’s obviously an exaggeration, but I think it’s become more entertaining, a natural thing to do for people.’’

And Risoli, who maintains a vast reference book of cheeses and has trained front-line waiters on more than 100 of them, has been happy to deliver, weaving an invisible cocoon for diners who felt cared for, tended, but never pressured or pandered to — night after night.

“Everyone now wants an ‘experience.’ In the early 1980s, the word you could use would be ‘stuffy.’ I think one of the first things I tried to do is help service be more relaxed and more about the guest than about the server, which was really what fine dining seemed to be a long time ago,’’ he says.

And so Risoli schooled himself in the imperceptible: the stiffening of a diner’s back, the tensing of a shoulder.

“A slight rise in the shoulder can say more than anything a guest could ever tell you. Sometimes it means you need to focus a little more. Maybe they’re thinking they’re not getting enough attention. If something distracts you for a split-second, in that second, you maybe lose them a little bit because you weren’t with them. You have to redirect,’’ he says.

Which, let’s face it, might get exhausting. After decades of catering to others, Risoli is taking time for himself: gardening at his Ashland home (he raises orchids), reading (currently on his shelf: Thomas Mann’s “Buddenbrooks’’), and traveling with his husband, former Wellesley College music professor Charles Fisk, a classical pianist.

He’ll also continue to paint and exhibit abstract oil paintings at Gallery NAGA on Newbury Street.

“I really spent my life balancing the restaurant with studio time,’’ he says. “I wanted to be able to spend more time producing my art.’’

And, yes, he’ll keep eating cheese. He speaks lovingly of the restaurant’s most requested variety, an aged Gouda from Holland that was “crunchy, with savory butterscotch flavors’’; he’s also planning a trip to Vermont’s Spring Brook Farm, home of a nutty, spicy Tarentaise.

“I have a soft spot for New England cheeses,’’ he allows.

Risoli might never forget a face, and he never forgets a cheese. For him, it’s personal.

“You can name the cheese maker. You can almost name the cows, in some cases,’’ he says.

Ever the diplomat, he declines to name a cheese he simply can’t abide.

“I can’t do that! I tend to like the intention behind every cheese, if not the actuality.’’ He pauses. “Well, I would say [there is] some mass-produced cheese with no soul. If a real person made the cheese, you have to respect that.’’

And really, it’s this love for people that kept him going. At L’Espalier, it seemed, the diner — not the chef, not the food — was always the star. And Risoli was in charge of the spotlight.

How did he do it?

“By being human.’’ he says. “By making contact. By smiling. By letting the guest know just through gesture, expression, and kind words that it’s their night.’’

Now, after 34 years, it’s his.

Kara Baskin can be reached at kara.baskin@globe.com.