Le Pavillon

In the April 1946 Gourmet magazine, restaurant critic and chronicler of the social elite Iles Brody wrote about a special dinner he had enjoyed at the ultimate temple of Manhattan culinary and social snobbery, Le Pavillon. The late, lamented Gourmet was five years old at this time and still had its initial slant toward male readership, more the consumer than the preparer of fine foods. Characteristically, it all about ignored wartime rationing and postwar shortages in its coverage. Brody had a monthly restaurant feature, 'Specialite de la Maison."

Brody's meal started off with caviar. Although noting that fresh caviar, rather than the heavily salted version, was not available in New York City at this time of year, Brody asserted that the caviar served at Le Pavillon was about as good as you could get, if a bit sharp, and was served with chopped egg, chives and onions with half lemons and hot toast on the side. The wartime shortage of first-rate caviar had created untold suffering for the city's upper crust. The meal continued with a bouillon that held tiny quenelles of chicken forcemeat, followed by a salmon trout in a court bouillon that was portioned out by Henri Soule, the proprietor, who watched over the diners as they enthusiastically devoured the dish. The venison came in a Grand Venour sauce, a chestnut puree. Brody instructed the neophyte gourmet that chestnuts were served in many different ways in Europe but were seldom seen in restaurants in America and then almost always as a puree. The dessert was ananas vole, or veiled pineapples, which was whipped sugar and diced pineapples soaked in liqueurs over ice. Magnums of 1937 vintage champagne were served with the meals. Coffee, brandy and cigars finished it off. While this was a special dinner, Brody assured readers that the restaurant's plat du jour was sufficient to produce ecstasy. Lunch ran $3 (about $33 in current dollars) and dinner about $6.

Le Pavillon was located at this time at 5 East 57th Street, across the street from the St. Regis, where it had opened in 1941, just seven weeks before the U.S. entered the war. The spot had held two previous unsuccessful restaurants but Le Pavillon was an immediate success. As its name declared, Pavillon was the offspring of the restaurant at the French pavilion at the World's Fair which had become a popular excursion for New York's cafe society. Soule preceded the official opening with a private preview dinner for members of the city's most exalted families, creating one of the social events of the season. Le Pavillon was a welcome destination for those who had dined in the grand restaurants of Paris. French haute cuisine, which had reigned supreme for decades, had all but disappeared from the city during Prohibition when the grand restaurants that had served the complicated fare closed their doors after losing the revenue generated by wine and liquor sales. The speakeasies that replaced them offered simpler dishes. Soule and his staff were stranded in New York after the outbreak of war in Europe, as were employees of other foreign pavilions, some of whom, such as the Italians, were treated as enemy aliens. Temporary work permits forced some who had stayed to work off the books, particularly in the modest French bistros of the West Side. Soule and his staff crossed into Canada at Niagara Falls and then crossed back with status as wartime refugees, allowing them to live and work legally in the city.

Soule made no concessions to American tastes in the kitchen, which was classic French, but he had to make some adaptions to Manhattan social customs in the dining room. In France, the grand restaurants were open to anyone who appreciated the food and could afford the tab, but the Manhattan elite demanded social exclusivity. They did not want to dine beside just anyone. Soule was happy to oblige, running his restaurant as his personal palace to which only the wealthy and the famous were invited. Like '21,' Pavillon kept out interlopers and banished the marginal to Siberia, a term which some food historians say Soule invented, although '21' had already put the custom into practice. Diners at Le Pavillon smoked between courses, a gross breach of dining etiquette in France where some restaurateurs would immediately present the check to any patron who lit up since this properly signaled the end of the meal. Some patrons objected to the placement of the bar in the front room which oddly was considered the most desirable place to dine although it was close to the traffic at the door as well as to the noise of the bar crowd. The large dining room in the rear was far more tranquil but the front room allowed one to see and be seen. Those who wanted a visit to Le Pavillon to be a true Parisian experience thought that, in any case, cocktails were out of place. One should consume exquisite food with fine vintage French wines not dull the taste buds with Scotch or gin. But too many New Yorkers were too attached to their cocktails for this to work as a policy in Manhattan.

The New Yorker writer Joseph Wechsberg, who profiled Soule for the magazine, later expanded into a book about the restaurant, wrote that Le Pavillon was a "great, elegant restaurant, a triumph of evil capitalism and good taste." Like most of the great names of French cuisine, Soule had humble beginnings, He was born in a small hamlet and began his career as a busboy. However, Soule was not a chef and seldom ventured into his kitchen, where Pierre Franey reigned, serving instead as host, greeting the favored at the door and often carving their roasts at table side. He offered flattery and special attentions to the favored but never addressed his patrons by their first name or engaged them in lengthy conversation. He did not socialize with them. He once claimed his only pastime was paying bills. Some regulars were afraid of him. He was short, fat and arrogant, a martinet toward his staff and he had a somewhat menacing air under the social niceties. He would fix a diner with a withering stare if the diner made what Soule considered to be an inappropriate request. He was considered an insufferable snob by some but it is unclear to what extent this reflected his personal predilections rather than his business acumen; he knew his customers' pretensions and catered to them. He was said to have his kitchen staff prepare ten plates of a dish that did not appear on the menu from time to time which were then offered selectively to ten different favored patrons, each of whom was told it had been prepared exclusively for him. The menu was almost entirely in French. The waiters were French and supercilious and spoke as little English as they could get away with, but the service was impeccable. A florist worked six hours daily on the flower arrangements. The chairs were upholstered in cerise damask.

Le Pavillon accommodated 150 for lunch and 75 for dinner. To most of the New York social elite at this time, Le Pavillon was the top restaurant in the city, although a few preferred its competitors, Le Chambord, said to by Manhattan's priciest restaurant, or Voisin. Almost half the tables were held in reserve until the last minute for the most favored of the regulars who needed no reservations. This was where the Astors, Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and Kennedys dined along with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Cole Porter and his wife, and the fashion designer Mainbocher. Lesser lights frequently had to wait at the bar to see if a table opened. The restaurant was heavily promoted by the fashion magazines and food writers, who were permitted entry by the publicity conscious Soule. However, when the influential editor Carmel Snow, who had been among Le Pavillon's most ardent early promoters, was forced out of her job at Harper's Bazaar in her seventies, her regular spot at Le Pavillon was moved from a central location to a table by the cash register, reflecting her diminished status. Its success spawned a flood of imitators in the post war period, many of them started by former staff of Le Pavillon.