Le Pavillon was a

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 ...

restaurant that defined French food in the United States from 1941 to 1966. The restaurant started as the ''Le Restaurant du Pavillon de France'' at the

1939 New York 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 Purchas ...

run by

Henri Soulé Henri Soulé (1903, Bayonne, France –1966 New York City) was the proprietor of Le Pavillon and La Côte Basque restaurants in New York City. Soulé also operated The Hedges in Southampton, New York. He is credited with having “trained an ent ...

(1904–1966). When

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

began, Soulé and the Pavillon 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 ...

stayed in the United States as war refugees. The restaurant formally opened on October 15, 1941, at 5 East 55th Street on

Fifth Avenue Fifth Avenue is a major and prominent thoroughfare in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It stretches north from Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village to West 143rd Street in Harlem. It is one of the most expensive shopping stre ...

, across the street from the

St. Regis New York The St. Regis New York is a historic luxury hotel at 2 East 55th Street, at the southeast corner with Fifth Avenue, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The hotel was originally developed by John Jacob Astor IV and was comp ...

. In 1957, Le Pavillon moved to the

Ritz Tower The Ritz Tower is a luxury residential building at 465 Park Avenue on the corner of East 57th Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It was built from 1925 to 1926 as an apartment hotel and was designed by Emery Roth an ...

Park Avenue Park Avenue is a wide New York City boulevard which carries north and southbound traffic in the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx. For most of the road's length in Manhattan, it runs parallel to Madison Avenue to the west and Lexington Avenu ...

and 57th Street. Soulé died in 1966, and Le Pavillon closed in 1971. In his autobiography,

Jacques Pépin Jacques Pépin (; born December 18, 1935) is a French chef, author, culinary educator, television personality, and artist. After having been the personal chef of French President Charles de Gaulle, he moved to the US in 1959 and after working ...

describes how he was first employed at Le Pavilion after emigrating to the US in 1959. He found that Franey and the rest of the staff were underpaid and treated poorly by Soulé, who insisted that he was barely making ends meet, even though he would offer complimentary meals and wine to a large number of celebrity guests. When Pépin and others organized a protest, he found himself physically threatened by organized-crime goons. However, there was soon an exodus of the staff (Franey and Pépin moved to

Howard Johnson's Howard Johnson's, or Howard Johnson by Wyndham, is an American hotel chain and former restaurant chain. Founded by Howard Deering Johnson in 1925 as a restaurant, it was the largest restaurant chain in the U.S. throughout the 1960s and 1970s, ...

) and the restaurant never recovered. Soulé's other faux pas was allowing paparazzi to disturb the Kennedy family (who were regular customers) and their staffers during John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign: when the Kennedy team, which was dining at the restaurant, asked the paparazzi to leave, Soulé insisted that only he had the right, as owner, to determine who entered and left the restaurant, and stated that, even before the election, "the Kennedys already think they are running the country." (Pépin was offered the job of White House chef after the election, but declined.)

Daniel Boulud Daniel Boulud (born 25 March 1955 in Saint-Pierre-de-Chandieu) is a French chef and restaurateur with restaurants in New York City, Palm Beach, Miami, Toronto, Montréal, Singapore, the Bahamas, the Berkshires and Dubai. He is best known for h ...

opened a restaurant with the same name in 2021, in homage to Soulé's restaurant.

References

External links

Profile of restaurant''The New Yorker'' profile
* ttps://www.usnews.com/usnews/culture/articles/050815/15fair.htm US News profile {{DEFAULTSORT:Pavillon, Le 1971 disestablishments in New York (state) Defunct restaurants in New York City Fifth Avenue French restaurants in New York City Midtown Manhattan Restaurants established in 1941 1941 establishments in New York City Defunct French restaurants in the United States