America's Best French Restaurant

By Mimi Sheraton

$ "When Andre was ten, I was ill for three weeks. He did all of the cooking for his father, his brother and himself. Even pastries. I had never noticed that he was in the kitchen often, or that he watched or asked me questions and I never tried to teach him. But suddenly, he simply began to cook . . . Il est encore mon petit garcon."

-- Mimi Soltner, 78, in Guebwiller,

Alsace

Mrs. Soltner's little boy Andre is still cooking, and how! Now 53, he has spent almost half of his life in the kitchen of Lutece, the luxury town-house restaurant on Manhattan's East Side that this year is celebrating its 25th birthday. The chef since Lutece opened on Feb.16, 1961, and the sole proprietor since 1972, Soltner has cooked his way to culinary glory. Despite a $100-a-person average check for dinner, and a $50 counterpart at lunch, reservations for one of the 29 tables must be made one month in advance to the day. By 9:30 each morning all tables are booked for the corresponding date four weeks away. An average of 1,500 requests for seats are refused daily. Soltner's skill in preparing the mix of French dishes Lutece is known for has won him every major award accorded to chefs in his native France, as well as top ratings from virtually every food critic and restaurant guidebook in the U.S.

Despite such accolades, and the attendant financial success, Soltner remains modest and has a tendency to run scared. "I worry most about the high prices we have to charge because our costs keep going up. Even rich people have a breaking point. I tell my staff to be very, very careful with customers. Today we are on top, but tomorrow who knows?"

Because he worries, Soltner almost never leaves his kitchen for publicity performances, whether to pick up an award or do demonstration cooking. He appreciates the efforts of French superstars like Paul Bocuse because he thinks they have given chefs a better place in society, but he is uneasy if he cannot oversee the kitchen and walk through his dining room to help guests order. When he has to trim costs, though, he usually does it in the dining room, choosing very simple flower arrangements (two or three roses in bud vases at most tables) and even allowing woebegone potted palms to remain in the garden dining room.

It is such economies that give Lutece with its four dining rooms the air of a simple country bistro -- an aura that appeals to some, but not to others. The most decor-conscious shun it, but it attracts many celebrities such as Jack Lemmon, Woody Allen and Bill Blass. Says Blass: "I love it because it has great food and because it is a bistro. I like to stop at the kitchen window and talk to Andre about what we will eat. I also like not having to jump up and embrace someone every other minute, and I like seeing the mix of plain and fancy people."

That mix is something Andre and his wife Simone cherish as well, and they try to seat newcomers near celebrities when possible. Soltner also takes pride in remembering what he served to each guest on each visit. "I have one couple who has come for dinner every Monday night for 18 or 20 years," he says. "They never look at a menu, and I never give them the same thing twice. Others like familiar dishes and order them in advance. I try to please them and often serve dishes like choucroute (Alsace's national dish of sauerkraut, sausages and assorted cuts of pork) or my original veal with kidneys as a daily special. I like to try new combinations, not that anything is really original. Every 'invention' in the nouvelle cuisine can be found in some form in old cookbooks. And I know one thing. No matter what they say about wanting light food and liking new dishes, guests love the old tastes. When I make a blanquette, or marinated venison or any kind of stew, guests grab my hand in the dining room and practically get tears in their eyes. 'That was real food,' they say."

This was hardly the tone and style of the Lutece unveiled by Andre Surmain, the original owner and creator 25 years ago. It was then the city's most lavishly decorated and expensive restaurant, with a price-fixed lunch at $6.50 and a la carte main courses at $8.25 that evoked gasps from customers. Nor was its success instantaneous. In a review written one month after Lutece opened, Craig Claiborne, then the restaurant critic for the New York Times, allowed that two dishes -- foie gras baked in a brioche loaf and roast veal stuffed with truffled kidneys -- were superb, but, he summarized, "the food at Lutece could not be called great cuisine."

Now the owner of the well-established Le Relais a Mougins in the south of France, and a clone of the same name newly opened this winter in Palm Beach, Fla., Surmain, 65, recalls early triumphs and failures: "I wanted not a restaurant, but the restaurant. And to become famous, it had to have a short name without the word restaurant in it," he says, explaining that he finally chose Lutece from the ancient name for Paris, Lutetia. When he was making his | plans he heard of Soltner, then the chef at Chez Hansi, an Alsatian brasserie in Paris. Surmain went over, tasted Soltner's food and offered him a job with the promise of a partnership if they succeeded. "It sounded like a crazy idea, but I thought that at least I'd learn English," says Soltner. "We were a good team, the two Andres," Surmain recalls.

If Lutece has changed in 25 years, so have conditions of running a restaurant. It may be easier in some ways to please customers, but in others it is more difficult. For one thing, Soltner feels, Americans have become more sophisticated and know about food and products, and he finds that rewarding. Yet a surprisingly large number of specialties remain from the original menu, among them the creamed pea soup, creme Saint-Germain, the mignonettes of beef in puff pastry, the salmon in crust, and snails in tiny terrines with shallot and garlic butter. Recently Soltner worked out a new and delectable variation on those snails, combining them with the traditional herb butter and Riesling wine and baking them inside crusty brioches.

"We also get much better products now. Even eight years ago, we had trouble finding fresh chervil and I doubt there was a pound of girolles in the country. Now I get all the fresh herbs and wild mushrooms, as well as venison from New Zealand, fish from France, foie gras and naturally raised chickens from the Catskills." And Soltner works with a better staff, which includes an increasing number of native recruits. "It used to be that no Americans wanted to work in kitchens," he says. "Now we have many, along with French, of course, and several Dominicans. Young people think being a chef is a glamorous job, and that helps, as long as they are not afraid to work."

Diligent work and pride in the results are in Soltner's genes. His maternal grandfather was a renowned pastry chef in Alsace, where many main courses, as well as desserts, are baked in crusts. When Andre was 15, he signed on to a three-year apprenticeship with the chef of the Hotel du Parc in Mulhouse, near his native town of Thann. He learned to perform in every station of the kitchen. "As soon as my father signed the papers, the old chef looked at me and said, 'Now you belong to me,' and he wasn't kidding. But he was a good chef and a good man. We began assisting, three months at a time, at the grill, with the saucier, the garde-manger (where cold appetizers, salads and cold, unbaked desserts are prepared) and in the pastry kitchen." Through it all, < Soltner remembered things he had absorbed in his mother's kitchen. "She is a wonderful cook, and I still use many of her special touches," he observes, explaining her trick of frying uncooked fresh noodles until crisp and then putting them on top of boiled noodles for textural contrast.

Other than costs, Soltner considers competition his "biggest problem." When Lutece opened, there were several great French restaurants in New York, including Le Pavillon, Chambord and Cafe Chauveron, but today the pressure is to get publicity that will attract a fickle, restaurant-hopping audience. Last year's beef Wellington has about as much appeal to a food journalist as last year's A-line dress has to a fashion editor, and so chefs, like couturiers, now have to come up with a new line every year.

Soltner feels that he has a secret weapon in the dining-room war, and he points to his chef de cuisine of ten years, Christian Bertrand, and his sous chefs, George Troisgros, of the famed Roanne restaurant family; Joel Benjamin, whose father Roger is a captain at Lutece; and Bill Peet, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. "We know how to cook everything. Few chefs in boutique restaurants do," he said, referring to small restaurants with limited menus that do a narrow, trendy cooking like that dubbed "new American."

Most at home in his kitchen, Soltner starts work between 8 and 9 in the morning, checking on the ingredients delivered by suppliers. "It is pointless for me to go to market. Everything is too far apart in New York and, anyway, I would be a small purchaser, and so not get first choice. But my wholesalers are important purchasers and I am important to them, so I get the best of the best. If not, I call them fast -- like this," he said, phoning his fish wholesaler of 25 years to complain about a batch of less than fresh scallops. Soltner is a demanding chef, but he takes good care of his employees, paying top wages and taking an interest in them. Though competitors try to woo them away, Lutece has practically no turnover. Still there are intermittent problems and complaints from both customers and critics. "Critics aren't always wrong," Soltner says, adding quickly, "but they aren't always right either. The staff feels pressure from our reputation, with some customers coming to prove we do not deserve it. At times, the traffic is a little too heavy and, of course, when we get a good review it can go to a captain's head."

Even the most dedicated chef who has fun in his kitchen needs some recreation and for Andre Soltner that means skiing. When Saturday dinner ends, he and Simone, who welcomes guests and monitors the Lutece dining room, drive 2 1/2 hours to their home at Hunter Mountain, north of New York City. Simone is content to tend to her plants, and he skis. "I have a weekend dog too," he says. "He is a Labrador retriever and belongs to an American family all week, but on Sunday he comes to see me. If I am not there, he comes to the ski area and runs up the mountain to find me. That's because I cook French soup for him. Sammy knows good French cooking when he tastes it."

Would Soltner ever want to do anything else? "What would I do if I sold Lutece?" he asks almost rhetorically. "I would love to have a little Alsatian restaurant where I do the cooking of my childhood, but really it would be silly. If I am going to have a restaurant, it might as well be Lutece. But maybe someday I would love to work with young people."

What Simone would do is clear. "I would go to theater and eat in restaurants and fix up my house. I would live," she says. Neither she nor her husband nor any member of the Lutece staff has ever had a meal in the restaurant's dining room. "Our families come, but it is not right for us to wait on each other," Andre and his captains agree.

For vacations during August, Soltner may do cooking demonstrations on a cruise ship, taking his wife and mother along, or they visit Alsace and Simone's native Normandy. There she catches up on what she calls "real" apple cider and dishes her sister-in-law prepares with rabbit and lamb. Do the Soltners ever argue about the relative superiority of their regional kitchens? "That was settled long ago. We decided that the best food is Alsatian," says the husband. Soltner is "bien attache," say relatives, well attached to family, food, and language. "He has never lost this sense of his roots," brother-in-law Pierre notes.

"Andre has never changed, you see," his mother says. "He is still simply a boy of Alsace."