Attempting to find a needle in a haystack – Part III
I hope, if you have read the first two articles, you understand my feelings towards finding the near perfect restaurant.
The one that comes closest to my criterion has been LUTECE in New York. Back in the ’80’s I dined their as often as possible and on one occassion I talked with the famous chef/owner Andre Soltner.
Ask any dozen critics or reviewers what has been the best French restaurant in the United States and chances are the unhesitating reply is “Lutece.” Being Number One and staying there for nearly a quarter of a century is no longer an easy trick in our society of culinary cognoscenti-especially in New York City, with its 2,700 plus restaurants, and new and elegant dining spots opening at a staggering rate. Yet Lutece (the ancient Roman name for Paris), first and last bastion of classic French cuisine, has steadfastly remained on top. Why? Because of the supreme dedication of its genial chef/proprietor Andre Soltner and his personally trained team of 38 employees. A strict, withal gentle, master, he wears his toque and apron with grace and uncompromising pride.
“I believe in good cooking…what you feel here,” he says, reaching somewhere between his heart and his stomach. “Cooking comes from the inside. You love it. If you don’t want to taste it, then you are lost.
“Calling me a ‘classic chef’ is not altogether true. My background was classic, beginning 37 years ago.” We suggest that he looks scarcely a year older than that, maintaining, for a chef, a trim figure and a distinctly youthful mien. He grins as he says:
“Well, my second love, skiing, helps, but not enough. And I’m on my feet, moving, working 15 or 16 hours a day. I’ve never missed work in 23 years, except two days in 1968 when I went to Paris to accept an award. I travel to Vermont, two years ago to Taos, for the skiing. I swim and play tennis, too, usually on Sundays when my wife Simone and I go to our country home in the Catskills.”
Does his wife cook? Soltner smiles and says she makes a lovely home-style rabbit soup. During the week, she is the receptionist for the restaurant, troubleshooting and taking reservations and more often than not, turning away some hundred diners every day. In the charming brownstone that houses Lutece, the Soltners reside above stairs during the workweek.
An Alsatian by birth, Soltner has made Lutece one of the most comfortable of fine dining spots. In its beginnings, before he became owner, it was considered a watering hole for culinary snobs and celebrities, Its erstwhile owner assigned preferntial tables to the haut monde, pointing out to neophytes the damask and Baccarat table appointments and the “big name clients.” Today, the emphasis, thanks to Soltner, is on the food, and one goes to dine, not to gape at other diners. The elegance, the down-to-earth pleasantness persists in the glorious dishes proffered and in the Redoute print of an old-fashioned rose on a gigantic menu, printed inside with the many awards Soltner has acquired for excellence. He is most proud of the Meilleur Ouvrier de France, presented to him in 1968 in Paris, and the 1970 gold medal of the prestigious International Chef’s Association.
A perfectionist in every detail, he stoutly maintains that “a chef who has had no basic classical training is not a professional. I’ve adapted, experimented. That is alway necessary. I am a good sleuth in dissecting others’ recipes. And I always have a recipe in my head before starting a dish.”
If a popularity poll were taken among chefs, our money would be on this talented man whose good humor and willingness to share nets him a full “10” among his peers. As he muses on his own stellar career, he acknowledges that his feeling for cooking came primarily from his mother.
But, do you know,” he says, “I dreamed of her double-cooked rice and thought it so fantastic. Then one day I cooked it her way, and guess what, it wasn’t all that good.”
He apprenticed in a small hotel in his native Alsace under chef Rene Simon, who taught him the basics, and just before coming to Lutece he was the head chef at Chez Hansi in Paris.
He admired-and early on was even “shaken and impressed by” the French restaurateur Fernand Point.
“When I was 28 I used to be pretty temperamental, but now I’ve calmed down. My kitchen goes smoothly. We respect each other here and I think we have a beautiful ambience. This is a tough business, physically hard. I am a craftsman, not a businessman, although I make my living here. We do as many as 70 lunches and 120 dinners each day, sometimes 90 at once. And it works. Those 600-seat restaurants are not good for true chefs.
If that’s what someone wants to run, then he or she must go to business school.”
Soltner is full of such advice not only for his own staff but also for those fresh from professional schools.
“Here we have an interesting mix of nationalities in the restaurant and the kitchen. We have two Chinese busboys and one German. In the kitchen there are French American and Spanish cooks. And my friend Jean Troisgros’s son, too. My chef de cuisine is Christian Bertrand, who actually thinks as I do. We work very closely. Since Simone and I have no children, he is almost a son to us and someday may fill my shoes.”
