André Soltner, a chef whose reverence for classic French cooking and the homey specialties of his native Alsace helped make Lutèce, in Midtown Manhattan, one of the most celebrated restaurants in the United States, died on Saturday morning in Charlottesville, Va. He was 92.
His death, in a hospital. was confirmed by the lawyer Glenn W. Dopf, a close friend.
Mr. Soltner took his place behind the stove at Lutèce on Feb. 16, 1961, the restaurant’s opening day, and stayed there for 33 years. As a partner in the restaurant and eventually the sole owner, he delivered haute-cuisine standards in an intimate setting that became an extension of his own personality.
Lutèce was like a gilded bistro. Simone, Mr. Soltner’s wife, greeted visitors and processed the checks. When not laboring in the kitchen, Mr. Soltner stopped by the tables in the dining room to chat briefly with patrons and help them navigate the menu. Regulars left it to him to choose. When the last guests had left at night, the Soltners retired to their fourth-floor apartment above the restaurant on East 50th Street.
At a time when fresh ingredients could be hard to obtain, Mr. Soltner insisted on having Dover sole, Scottish salmon and Mediterranean rouget flown in overnight. He struck deals with farmers to supply shallots and girolle mushrooms. Impeccable ingredients, flawless technique and a modern-minded approach to French style put Lutèce in a class by itself and sent critics scrambling for superlatives.
In 2008, when the food critic Gael Greene named the most influential restaurants of the previous 40 years in New York, Lutèce led the list. It “set the gold standard for what a French restaurant should be in America,” she wrote in New York magazine. On a previous occasion, she had written that Mr. Soltner was “the best French chef in New York, the rare merger of classical training, technical wizardry, dedication and creative zest.”
Mr. Soltner always resisted such accolades. “Basically I am a cook,” he told Nation’s Restaurant News in 1987. “We are not stars. It’s nice to be recognized, but let’s draw the line.”
André Ernest Soltner was born on Nov. 20, 1932, in the small Alsatian town of Thann, where his father, Ernest, was a cabinetmaker. As a child, he spent time in the kitchen helping his mother, Eugenie (Kurtz) Soltner, known as Mimi. By the time he was 13, he was preparing three-course lunches and dinners for his father and his older brother when his mother was away visiting relatives.
He wanted to take up his father’s trade, but his brother exercised first choice. Instead, at 15, he apprenticed in the kitchens of the Hôtel du Parc in Mulhouse, not far from Thann. When it came time to take the examinations for his professional certificate, he earned the top score for the region of Haut-Rhin.
After working as an assistant sauce chef at the Hôtel Royal in Deauville, the seaside resort in Normandy, he was hired by two seasonal hotels in Switzerland. In the summers he worked at the Hôtel Palace in Pontresina, near St. Moritz; in the winters he worked at the Hôtel Acker in Wildhaus.
While in Switzerland he became an avid skier, a talent that came in handy in 1953 when he began his required military service. He was assigned to the French ski patrol.
After serving in the army, he found work in Paris at Chez Hansi, a bustling Alsatian brasserie in Montparnasse. The restaurant was large. On a busy day it served 200 lunches and 400 dinners.
Mr. Soltner had been named executive chef by the time he was 27, commanding a staff of 17. It was there that he met Simone Gomez, a waitress, whom he married in 1962.
In New York, André Surmain, an American-born Frenchman who provided catering services to the international airlines at Idlewild Airport (now John F. Kennedy International Airport), was looking for a chef to run the kitchen at a restaurant he planned to open in his Midtown townhouse.
For a time, he and James Beard had operated a cooking school on the premises, but now Mr. Surmain envisioned a restaurant that, he proclaimed bombastically, would be the best in the world. At the suggestion of a pastry chef who had worked under Mr. Soltner, he dined at Chez Hansi.
Mr. Surmain, impressed, brought Mr. Soltner to New York to work at his new restaurant, Lutèce, named after the Latin term for ancient Paris. “I thought maybe I’d stay for two years,” Mr. Soltner told Nation’s Restaurant News in 1996. He never left. During the three decades he spent at Lutèce, he missed only four days of work — for the funerals of his father and his brother.
The restaurant, despite Mr. Surmain’s proclamation, got off to a rocky start.
Craig Claiborne of The New York Times gave it a dismissive review. “A few of the dishes, a fois gras en brioche or a roast veal with kidney, for example, could qualify as superb; others, such as a poussin rôti aux girolles (squab chicken with wild mushrooms), are routine,” he wrote. Overall, he concluded, “the food at Lutèce could not be called great cuisine.”
Lutèce “got the same rating as Chock Full o’ Nuts,” Mr. Soltner told The Times in 1995. “One star!”
The restaurant’s fortunes changed when the imperious Mr. Surmain tired of the business and, in 1973, sold his shares to Mr. Soltner, who became the public face of Lutèce.
Overnight, the tone changed. The surroundings remained plush — Baccarat crystal, Christofle silver, bone china and a Redouté rose print on the menus — but Mr. Soltner ran the restaurant like a bistro. He did away with the Surmain system of seating by status. He worked the dining room. Patrons responded with fierce devotion.
Raymond Sokolov, the new dining critic for The Times, awarded Lutèce four stars in 1972, telling readers that “anyone who cares seriously about great food should start a special savings account earmarked for meals at this magnificent French restaurant.” He noted that in 1968 Mr. Soltner had passed the fearsomely demanding test for the title Meilleur Ouvrier de France — finest French craftsman. Mr. Soltner was the first French chef working outside France to win the honor.
The restaurant remained immune to trends. Over the years, customers returned again and again for dishes like individual filet mignon in brioche, onion tart, Dover sole meunière, roast duck with caramelized pears and, for the special few, baeckeoffe, a traditional Alsatian dish of baked beef, pork and lamb layered with onions and potatoes.
“I believe in the classic dishes and that a chef should have a classic training,” Mr. Soltner told The Times in 1981. “I don’t believe in fashion. Our cooking has evolved over 20 years, but basically I don’t think I’ve changed too much.”
In 1994, Mr. Soltner sold Lutèce to Ark Restaurants and became the dean of classic studies at the French Culinary Institute in Manhattan, now part of the Institute of Culinary Education. With Seymour Britchky, he wrote “The Lutèce Cookbook” (1995).
Lutèce closed in 2004. “You can imagine how I feel,” Mr. Soltner said at the time. “It was my baby for 34 years. But I was not so surprised, because they have been talking about this for a while.”
Simone Soltner died in 2016. Mr. Soltner is survived by his companion of eight years, Maryvonne Gasparini, and a sister, Marie Rose Vandevoorde. He lived in Manhattan and had homes in Hunter Mountain, N.Y., and Cannes, France.
Over the years, Mr. Soltner resisted numerous offers to open a second restaurant or develop a restaurant chain, even as celebrity chefs around him were establishing dining empires.
“If I did that, then everyone would say, ‘Lutèce is not the same as it used to be,’ or ‘André’s not there; he’s not cooking anymore,’” he told Nation’s Restaurant News in 1986. “And then I’ll lose everything that I have now, which would mean losing my happiness.”
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