Before Henri Soule arrived in 1939, New York lacked a single restaurant that, by international standards, could be rated first-class. Today Manhattan boasts a dozen—two of them are his, and most of the others are owned or staffed by his proteges. When he died last week of a heart attack at 62, his Le Pavilion was still the best of them all, the undisputed exemplar of haute cuisine in the U.S. and, by the judgment of the incorruptible Guide Michelin's Pierre Lamalle, the equal of the five best restaurants of Paris—which is to say, of the world.
In a sense, Soule was both made for the times and helped make them. When he arrived, the long divorce between fine food and great wines brought on by Prohibition was just over; the minor hedonistic revolution that was to take good food seriously, as something worth spending time and effort on, was just beginning. And for those who cared, or wanted to learn, Le Pavilion became the standard of excellence. "Soule was the last link with the classic tradition," says Adman David Ogilvy, a onetime chef himself. "Le Pavilion was an institution, not a restaurant. It was the Louvre."
Seven Jars to Satisfaction. Yet, for all his fame, Soule was never himself a chef, though he began developing a taste for fine food early in life and until the end glowingly recalled his mother's specialty: puree of salt codfish, served lukewarm. He was a busboy in Biarritz at 14, by 23 had become the youngest captain of waiters (at Le Mirabeau) in Paris. In 1939 he came to New York to manage the French restaurant at the World's Fair, in 1941 opened Le Pavilion, later added a second Manhattan restaurant, La Cote Basque.
Right from the start, he conceived of Le Pavilion as a grand ensemble of meticulously orchestrated details. "My team," he boasted, "is everything." He thought nothing of paying $26,400 a year for laundry; his florist bill ran to $20,000. He personally inspected all the restaurant's provisions, was so scrupulous about caviar, for instance, that he once opened seven jars in a row before finding one that he considered satisfactory. He insisted on hand-dried Baccarat glasses and the finest wines, although he would also serve a bottle of milk to lohn F. Kennedy in a silver ice bucket as if it were champagne.
Earliest Truffles. His customers came to include all those with money, family, achievement or plain corporate brass who make up society in New York. With them Soule was always cool, correct and attentive. Recalls the New York Times's Charlotte Curtis: "He would arrange his people around the room as if he were a woman preparing for a ball. He would put Mrs. William Paley on one banquette like a huge bouquet of flowers, Mrs. John Pell on another side, and perhaps Elizabeth Arden in still a third corner."
For all the indisputably French decor and air of luxury, what Le Pavilion's customers most appreciated was the food, which was classic French cooking. There was no tampering with recipes, as there was no single specialty. For Soule, everything was a specialty, from tasty crabmeat timbale with its light sauce, to the roast duck with peaches, through the tender, flaky strawberry tart. No restaurant served younger partridges, earlier truffles, or more tender asparagus.