‟Barr’s prose is lively and his sourcing impeccable…a thoroughly enjoyable look into a defining moment of culinary history
Ritz & Escoffier
- Nonfiction
- Publisher
- Clarkson Potter
- Publication Date
- April 3, 2017
- hardcover
- 9780804186292
In early August 1889, César Ritz, a Swiss hotelier highly regarded for his exquisite taste, found himself at the Savoy Hotel in London. He had come at the request of Richard D’Oyly Carte, the financier of Gilbert & Sullivan’s comic operas, who had modernized theater and was now looking to create the world’s best hotel. D’Oyly Carte soon seduced Ritz to move to London with his team, which included Auguste Escoffier, the chef de cuisine known for his elevated, original dishes. The result was a hotel and restaurant like no one had ever experienced, run in often mysterious and always extravagant ways–which created quite a scandal once exposed.
Barr deftly re-creates the thrilling Belle Epoque era just before World War I, when British aristocracy was at its peak, women began dining out unaccompanied by men, and American nouveaux riches and gauche industrialists convened in London to show off their wealth. In their collaboration at the still celebrated Savoy Hotel, where they welcomed loyal and sometimes salacious clients, such as Oscar Wilde and Sarah Bernhardt, Escoffier created the modern kitchen brigade and codified French cuisine for the ages in his seminal Le Guide culinaire, which remains in print today, and Ritz, whose name continues to grace the finest hotels across the world, created the world’s first luxury hotel. The pair also ruffled more than a few feathers in the process. Fine dining would never be the same–or more intriguing.
Praise for Ritz & Escoffier
‟His work is not just a fluidly structured dual biography but a provocative history of a turning point in the evolving hotel and restaurant industry.
‟Ritz & Escoffier is a vividly engaging piece of social history about two humbly-born visionaries—one a great hotelier, and one a great chef—and the temples of luxury they fashioned, first at the Savoy Hotel in Belle Époque London, and then at the Paris Ritz. Filled with intriguing details and fascinating (and sometimes unsavory) characters, Ritz & Escoffier re-creates a certain time and place with the deftest of touches.
‟In this winningly told story, Luke Barr explores the advent of the luxe life through the saga of hotelier César Ritz and chef Auguste Escoffier, whose partnership brought us not only the adjective ‘ritzy,’ itself no small testament, but also such once-novel phenomena as hotel rooms with their own bathrooms, and innovative dishes like Peach Melba. It’s a charming tale of success, scandal, and redemption—complete with an unexpected villain. Trigger alert: It will make you hungry, and a little nostalgic for bygone times.
‟A thrilling story of how an outsider—a Swiss peasant—instructed 19th century aristocrats, celebrities, politicians, and plutocrats how to live and, in doing so, single-handedly defined modern luxury. Luke Barr’s incandescent narrative is as smooth and seductive as the service at the Ritz.
‟Like Barr tells the remarkable story of how César Ritz built a world-class hospitality empire, and his esteemed chef Escoffier, took fine dining to new heights. Ritz & Escoffier is an entertaining account of how they adapted to–and even changed–social customs, helping the world modernize, and leaving behind an impressive legacy.
‟So very much of what is exciting in food and hospitality today, started with Ritz and Escoffier. They were modern for their time; they are modern for ours. Barr’s book is fascinating from beginning to end.
‟Such a fabulous couple of characters and such glamorous, dicey cosmopolitan milieux that Luke Barr depicts with such verve and lucidity. Ritz & Escoffier is a case study ofthe birth of branded luxury that reads like a dark, delicious urban spinoff prequel to Downton Abbey.
‟Bar…vividly captures the moment when Ritz and Escoffier conceptualized and created a new type of luxury establishment in which the aristocracy, the nouveau riche, and the beau monde mingled freely and easily. Barr’s highly enjoyable and well-researched book carries the reader into the intimate heart of Ritz and Escoffier’s philosophy.
‟Was it a coincidence that both Ritz and Escoffier were incontrovertibly ‘outsiders’ and that it took this outsider-dom to create a new barometer of taste?
‟Luke Barr’s delightful and engrossing book is a gripping story of rags to riches to scandal and back, and also a trenchant study of how our materialistic society formulated the idea of luxury. It’s written with wit and charm, seducing the reader just as deftly as its subjects once seduced international society.
‟Barr’s prose is lively and his sourcing impeccable…a thoroughly enjoyable look into a defining moment of culinary history