Henri Soulé (1903,

Bayonne Bayonne (; eu, Baiona ; oc, label= Gascon, Baiona ; es, Bayona) is a city in Southwestern France near the Spanish border. It is a commune and one of two subprefectures in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department, in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine re ...

, France –1966

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

) was the proprietor of Le Pavillon and

La Côte Basque La Côte Basque was a New York City restaurant. It opened in the late 1950s and operated until it closed on March 7, 2004. In business for 45 years, upon its closing ''The New York Times'' called it a "former high-society temple of French cuisine ...

restaurants in New York City. Soulé also operated The Hedges in

Southampton, New York Southampton, officially the Town of Southampton, is a town in southeastern Suffolk County, New York, partly on the South Fork of Long Island. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the town had a population of 69,036. Southampton is included in the stret ...

. He is credited with having “trained an entire generation of French chefs and New York restaurant owners.” He is also credited with using Siberia to describe the least desirable seats in a restaurant.

Biography

Soulé was a captain at the Café de Paris before becoming the mâitre d’. At the request of the French government, he came to the United States to run the Le Restaurant Français at the

1939 World's Fair The 1939–40 New York World's Fair was a world's fair held at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, New York, United States. It was the second-most expensive American world's fair of all time, exceeded only by St. Louis's Louisiana Purcha ...

. He did not return to France at the end of the Fair due to the German occupation. He opened Le Pavillon in 1941, considered the most influential French restaurant in America in the 1940s and '50s. In his autobiography "The Apprentice", the noted chef

Jacques Pepin Ancient and noble French family names, Jacques, Jacq, or James are believed to originate from the Middle Ages in the historic northwest Brittany region in France, and have since spread around the world over the centuries. To date, there are over ...

describes Henri Soule, who he worked for at Le Pavilion, as being exploitative and abusive to his employees, including his then head chef

Pierre Franey Pierre Franey (January 13, 1921 – October 15, 1996) was a French chef, best known for his televised cooking shows and his "60 Minute Gourmet" column in ''The New York Times''. Early years Franey grew up in northern Burgundy, France. As ...

. Soule used hired criminals to physically threaten his staff when they demanded increased pay. (A goon lifted Pepin physically off the ground after an initial protest, which was suppressed.) However, Soulé couldn't keep his employees from departing en masse for other employment, which they did: Le Pavilion shut down shortly thereafter. When he died, New York Times restaurant critic

Craig Claiborne Craig Claiborne (September 4, 1920 January 22, 2000) was an American restaurant critic, food journalist and book author. A long-time food editor and restaurant critic for ''The New York Times'', he was also the author of numerous cookbooks and ...

said “we had lost ‘the Michelangelo, the Mozart, the Leonardo of the French restaurant in America.’” It is said he died of a stroke at La Côte Basque. Another source says he died of a heart attack.

References

External links

* American restaurateurs 1903 births 1966 deaths People from Bayonne Deaths from cerebrovascular disease French emigrants to the United States {{US-business-bio-stub