Soltner, his spouse Simone, and the workers at their restaurant, Lutèce, in 1984.
Photograph: Susan Wooden/Getty Photos
Among the many listing of New York eating places which can be nonetheless talked about lengthy after they’ve closed — Maxwell’s Plum, One Fifth, Florent — one identify rises above all others: Lutèce. Gael Greene, the previous restaurant critic of this journal, as soon as known as it crucial restaurant in New York’s fashionable historical past. For many years after it opened in 1961, the townhouse at 249 E. fiftieth Avenue was thought-about the very best French restaurant in Manhattan, which on the time made it the very best restaurant in America, interval.
Presiding over all of it was its chef and eventual proprietor, André Soltner, who got here to New York to run the kitchen when he was 29 and who died this previous weekend on the age of 92. He ran Lutèce for proprietor André Surmain, who in 1970 advised Greene that the restaurant’s tiny kitchen was “the miracle on fiftieth Avenue.” Soltner purchased the restaurant in 1973 — the identical yr Greene listed his orange tart and pike en croûte with watercress sauce among the many finest dishes within the metropolis — and ran it for 21 extra years, famously taking off not more than a handful of nights. In an obituary, William Grimes describes the temper at Lutèce after Soltner purchased it:
In a single day, the tone modified. The environment remained plush — Baccarat crystal, Christofle silver, bone china and a Redouté rose print on the menus — however Mr. Soltner ran the restaurant like a bistro. He did away with the Surmain system of seating by standing. He labored the eating room. Patrons responded with fierce devotion.
The patrons who might afford it, anyway. A 1972 Occasions assessment by Raymond Sokolov that praised Soltner’s cooking — foie gras en brioche, sorrel soup, “probably the most attention-grabbing quenelles de brochet on the town” — additionally talked about that dinner for 2 on the time price the current-day equal of almost $600. In response, Sokolov advised opening “a particular financial savings account earmarked for meals at this magnificent French restaurant.”
What made the meals so good was not showmanship however dedication to the work of cooking. Soltner “grew up in speedy post-WWII France, they didn’t have any cash. The meals was at all times humble,” says chef Jeremiah Stone, who labored for Soltner on the French Culinary Institute when he was in his 20s. The story of French cooking in New York then “was a narrative of adaptation,” working with this nation’s restricted pantry. “When Soltner was cooking in New York, he would have had a alternative of, say, iceberg lettuce or romaine lettuce. Perhaps midway by way of the existence of Lutèce, Bibb comes alongside,” Stone says. “We’re spoiled now — I can go to the Greenmarket and resolve which shallots are finest for my recipes — however again then it was all in regards to the feeling you set into it. It was all approach, all coronary heart.”
Meals isn’t what continues to drive the legend of Lutèce. When the restaurant closed in 2004 — ten years after Soltner had offered it — Eric Asimov defined why individuals had cherished it a lot: “Mr. Soltner and his spouse, Simone, who ran the eating room, emanated unpretentious heat and maman-et-papa allure, a stark departure from the austere ambiance of French eating places that so many People discovered so intimidating.”
Soltner in 2010.
Photograph: Amy Sussman/Getty Photos
Soltner introduced that very same unpretentious heat to the following chapter of his profession as a dean on the FCI and a paterfamilias of the business throughout a interval of explosive development and pleasure round eating places. In doing so, he helped to increase his former restaurant’s legacy, not by way of boisterousness or model extensions, however together with his personal spirit (recounted in so many tributes these previous few days) of humility and generosity. It’s possible you’ll not have been in a position to order his onion tart, however anybody who met him might know to some extent what it felt like to take a seat in Lutèce’s eating room.
Soltner was Lutèce. He might have opened any restaurant he wished or just licensed his identify to offshoot brasseries inside airports, casinos, and cruise ships. He by no means did. The corporate that purchased the restaurant within the Nineties tried — it ran a Lutèce in Las Vegas for some time — however rapidly discovered the person, and never the identify, was the draw. Right this moment, there may be nonetheless one other Lutèce. It’s in Georgetown, it’s 5 years outdated, and it has no connection to Soltner or the unique restaurant. However chef and associate Matt Conroy (who got here on board after the identify was chosen) says Soltner confirmed up anyway to eat shortly after the restaurant opened. “It was a random Monday evening and the reservation wasn’t in his identify,” Conroy remembers. “I used to be on the road and after I heard he was right here I began sweating, tasting all the things once more.” After the meal, Soltner gave Conroy his card, advised him to be in contact if he ever wanted something, and returned to dine (and host a tribute dinner) over time. “The final time he was right here, he was in his 90s and nonetheless wished to speak about how a lot he cherished cooking,” Conroy says. “He advised us he was happy with all the things we did, however that we needed to do it for an additional 30 years like he had — you could love the work as a result of you may style it within the meals if the eagerness isn’t there.”
Soltner advised me a lot the identical factor after I was a 23-year-old culinary scholar, and he took an hour or so out of his day to speak in a small upstairs workplace. I couldn’t say precisely what we mentioned that afternoon (it was a very long time in the past), however I nonetheless keep in mind the sensation of ease that got here throughout the dialog. Soltner was disarmingly unassuming, completely satisfied to have a dialog with a younger wannabe cook dinner. “André was a mentor, a pure instructor,” Stone says. “Past even being a mentor, he set such a very good instance.” The place some cooks discover fame and wealth by exploiting the worst traits of the restaurant world — explosive anger, retaliatory violence, careless growth — Soltner’s stature, and that of his restaurant, will proceed to develop as a result of he embodied the perfect.