{"id":253040,"date":"2021-05-19T02:12:59","date_gmt":"2021-05-18T23:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/why-marilyn-monroe-jfk-wanted-in-at-nycs-le-pavillon\/"},"modified":"2021-05-19T02:12:59","modified_gmt":"2021-05-18T23:12:59","slug":"why-marilyn-monroe-jfk-wanted-in-at-nycs-le-pavillon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/why-marilyn-monroe-jfk-wanted-in-at-nycs-le-pavillon\/","title":{"rendered":"#Why Marilyn Monroe, JFK wanted in at NYC’s Le Pavillon"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Why Marilyn Monroe, JFK wanted in at NYC’s Le Pavillon<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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One afternoon in 1960, the Kennedy clan gathered at Le Pavillon on Park Avenue and 57th Street to discuss John\u2019s presidential bid. Per usual, the family sat at Le Royale, as the best table at the esteemed French restaurant was known, but they were soon disturbed by a photographer who had snuck into the establishment.\u00a0Joseph called over the manager and asked that the shutterbug be removed. The request made the\u00a0restaurant\u2019s\u00a0hotheaded, 5-foot-5-inch tall\u00a0proprietor Henri\u00a0Soul\u00e9\u00a0furious.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll do no such thing. At Le Pavillon, only\u00a0Soul\u00e9\u00a0decides who is or isn\u2019t accepted in the dining room,\u201d cried the restaurateur, who often referred to himself in the third person. \u201cThe campaign has not even begun, but some people already think they are running the country.\u201d The Kennedys quit dining at the\u00a0restaurant and\u00a0instead began frequenting nearby La\u00a0Caravelle, where many former Pavillon employees worked.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Interior
Regulars knew their social<\/a> status according to where they were sat inside Le Pavillon restaurant.<\/figcaption>
The LIFE Images Collection\/Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Before there was\u00a0La Grenouille<\/a>,\u00a0the Four Seasons<\/a> or\u00a0Frenchette<\/a>, there was Le Pavillon. Opened in 1941, the Midtown restaurant brought a new level of French food and sophistication to New York City\u00a0\u2014 and became the blueprint for see-and-be-seen hot spots to follow. The Kennedys, the\u00a0Astors, the\u00a0Vanderbilts, the\u00a0Windsors, Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio all frequented its elegant dining room, while a number of would-be notable chefs, including a young Jacques P\u00e9pin, spent time in the kitchen.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cUnquestionably, Henri\u00a0Soul\u00e9\u00a0trained an entire generation of French chefs and New York restaurant owners,\u201d Paul Freedman wrote in \u201cTen Restaurants That Changed America<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Famed
Famed chef Daniel Boulud will soon be opening his new restaurant, Le Pavillion, inside NYC\u2019s brand-new skyscraper at One Vanderbilt. <\/figcaption>
Matthew McDermott<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Daniel Boulud didn\u2019t pass through the storied restaurant\u2019s kitchen, but he\u2019s continuing its legacy. On Wednesday, he will open\u00a0his own Le Pavillon\u00a0at the base of the mega development\u00a0One Vanderbilt<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Despite its name, the new version is more Modern American than French, and it doesn\u2019t try to bring back stuffy old service rituals or dress codes. Still, Boulud isn\u2019t discounting its storied lineage.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Chef
Jacques Pepin spent time in Le Pavillion\u2019s kitchen as a young chef.<\/figcaption>
Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI like the fact that it was a long time ago, and yet it wasn\u2019t so long ago that I couldn\u2019t be connected to people and stories from that era,\u201d Boulud\u00a0has said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, Boulud invited 85-year-old P\u00e9pin to speak to his employees. P\u00e9pin worked at Le Pavillon for eight months in 1959 and 1960, and he talked about the unique formal service style, with dishes presented on silver platters and carved tableside. He also gifted Boulud a set of silverware from the restaurant.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe dining room was much more important than the dining room is today,\u201d P\u00e9pin told The Post. Nearly every dish \u2014 from a roast chicken served with a Champagne cream sauce to strip<\/a>ed bass braised with white wine, shallots and mushrooms \u2014 was carved and plated tableside by\u00a0Soul\u00e9\u00a0himself, who reigned in a navy suit and gray tie at lunch and a tuxedo at dinner.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 1939,\u00a0Soul\u00e9\u00a0brought 60 kitchen staffers and 38\u00a0ma\u00eetres d\u2019h\u00f4tel, captains, wine stewards and waiters \u2014 among them a young Charles Masson who would go on to open La Grenouille in 1962 \u2014 over from France to work in the country\u2019s pavilion at the World\u2019s Fair. \u201cThey were quartered below decks in third class,\u201d recalled James H. Heineman, a publisher who happ<\/a>ened to be on the boat with\u00a0Soul\u00e9\u2019s\u00a0crew. It was\u00a0a\u00a0\u201cterrible journey.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

On May 9, the restaurant opened at the fair, with a meal for 375 and dishes such as capon in tarragon aspic and chicken\u00a0consomm\u00e9\u00a0with cheese sticks. Diners were wowed by both the food and the service. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t as if New York did not already have French restaurants,\u201d wrote Freedman, but \u201cthe advent of Prohibition had meant the death of an older generation of luxury establishments of the more-or-less French sort.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Restaurateur
Restaurateur Henri Soule putting final touches on a plate inside Le Pavillon.<\/figcaption>
The LIFE Images Collection\/Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After the start of the war,\u00a0Soul\u00e9\u00a0and his chef, Pierre Franey, remained in the US as refugees. In October 1941, they opened Le Pavillon at East 55th Street, and it was an immediate success. \u201cI remember suddenly feeling for the first time an unquestionably great restaurant had opened in America,\u201d socialite Elaine Whitelaw\u00a0said at the time<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The food was as luxurious and French as could be found in America at the time, although some common Gallic ingredients, such as wild mushrooms and certain Mediterranean fish, could not be had. The cellar was filled with an enviable inventory of wines from Bordeaux. Flowers, which\u00a0Soul\u00e9\u00a0spent roughly $20,000 per year on, were carefully arranged throughout the dining room. Diners were sat by status and looks; those in the possession of one or the other would get a prominent table, those who were lacking were banished to a dining \u201cSiberia.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe highest ingredient was the clientele,\u201d the younger Charles Masson, 66, who fondly recalls his father\u2019s stories about the place, told The Post. \u201cIt sounds elitist, but if you throw a party and people don\u2019t show up, it\u2019s not a party.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n
\""Le
\u201cLe Pavillon Menu\u201d <\/figcaption>
The New York Public Library Digital Collections<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Soul\u00e9\u00a0was such a stickler about seating people according to his whims, he refused his landlord, Henry Cohn, a good table \u2014 even after Cohn threatened to raise his rent. Instead, in 1957, he relocated Le Pavillon to a new location, the Ritz Tower on 57th Street, at an estimated cost of $400,000. Cohn died the following year, and\u00a0Soul\u00e9\u00a0later rented the old space from Columbia Pictures and opened a more casual restaurant there called La C\u00f4te Basque.\u00a0 \u201cA man may take his wife to the C\u00f4te Basque and the other lady to Pavillon,\u201d\u00a0Soul\u00e9\u00a0quipped.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ferdinand Metz, who worked in the kitchen for three years in the early \u201960s, recalled an obsession with quality and details. \u201cCreamed spinach, most people would think it was an ordinary thing, but not at Le Pavillon,\u201d Metz,\u00a079,\u00a0who later served as the president of the\u00a0Culinary Institute of America<\/a>, told The Post. It was made fresh for each order \u2014 the only advance preparation was that the vegetable might be prewashed.\u00a0There were no recipes, although cooks might refer to Auguste Escoffier\u2019s \u201cLe Guide Culinaire<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Although he was exacting, Metz recalled\u00a0Soul\u00e9\u00a0quite fondly. \u201cHe understood what an elegant dining room should be all about,\u201d he told The Post. \u201cIf a gentleman came in with his mistress, he would gently usher him to a table not in view of where his wife was having lunch with her friends.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Soul\u00e9\u2019s\u00a0unique talent for hospitality was also on display in what became known as \u201cthe Pheasant Incident.\u201d A party of six had ordered an elaborate dinner in advance that was to feature caviar, a\u00a0consomm\u00e9, roasted pheasants and some special wines. The birds were brought out on a silver platter and shown to the diners and placed on a small table, which a clumsy busboy then knocked over. <\/p>\n

As everyone scrambled to scoop up the food,\u00a0Soul\u00e9\u00a0turned to the captain and cried, \u201cQuick, tell the kitchen to send out the other pheasants.\u201d He, of course, knew full well that there were no other pheasants that could be quickly prepared. Back in the kitchen, staffers reassembled and re-garnished the\u00a0meal and\u00a0brought it back out to the customers, who were none the wiser and would say it was the best bird they\u2019d ever eaten.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Restaurateur
Henri Soule, a demanding perfectionist, tidying up the tables at Le Pavillon.<\/figcaption>
The LIFE Images Collection\/Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The cocktails were also, of course, notable. Bartender Andre Gros-Daillon, who worked at the restaurant for 26 years before retiring in 1967, claimed to be the only one in the city (and maybe the entire US) who could make a martini that remained\u00a0perfectly\u00a0 icy\u00a0cold for 20 minutes. \u201cIt\u2019s all in the shake,\u201d he\u00a0told\u00a0the New York Times<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

P\u00e9pin remembers\u00a0Soul\u00e9\u00a0less fondly, as an \u201cautocratic\u201d man who wasn\u2019t especially generous. In his memoir, \u201cThe Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen<\/a>,\u201d P\u00e9pin wrote that\u00a0Soul\u00e9\u00a0treated head chef Franey with \u201cno more respect than he accorded to the mostly recently hired pot scrubber.\u201d <\/p>\n

And, while\u00a0Soul\u00e9\u00a0was quick to comp high-profile\u00a0guests\u00a0caviar or Dom P\u00e9rignon, he was stingy when it came to paying cooks. Franey left in 1960, and P\u00e9pin intended to organize the cooks to follow him. But two large Italian men from the union showed up and pinned him against a wall. \u201cI couldn\u2019t understand what they were saying in English, but I understood the meaning of it,\u201d recalled P\u00e9pin. Such tactics averted a walkout, but\u00a0Soul\u00e9\u00a0was still short on cooks and had to close for a couple weeks due to the labor issues.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Soule
Soule (left) and Chief Chef Clement Grangier inspect live lobsters in the restaurant\u2019s kitchen in 1962.<\/figcaption>
The LIFE Images Collection\/Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Soul\u00e9\u00a0died of a sudden heart attack at age 62 in 1966, and it soon became apparent why he was so solicitous when it came to his clientele\u2019s extramarital affairs. For years, he had a dalliance with the woman who ran the coatroom, Henriette Spalter. When he died, it came to light that he also had a wife in France. She claimed her inheritance and sold Le Pavillon to some investors, but it was never the same without\u00a0Soul\u00e9. There was music and sometimes a TV in the dining room, and, \u201cworst of all,\u201d Freedman wrote in his book, \u201cthe lemon quarters served with the salmon had not had their seeds removed.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 1971, Le Pavillon closed without fanfare. Nine years later, a young Daniel Boulud first arrived in New York City.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Masson, who recalled his late father and\u00a0Soul\u00e9\u00a0hugging and crying when La Grenouille opened, and who has his own restaurant in\u00a0Majorelle<\/a>, applauded Boulud for opening a Pavillon of his own.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes a lot of courage to open a restaurant,\u201d he said, \u201cand ever more so to try and follow in the footsteps of a giant.\u201d\u00a0\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Why Marilyn Monroe, JFK wanted in at NYC’s Le Pavillon” One afternoon in 1960, the Kennedy clan gathered at Le Pavillon on Park Avenue and 57th Street to discuss John\u2019s presidential bid. Per usual, the family sat at Le Royale, as the best table at the esteemed French restaurant was known, but they were soon…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":253041,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/05\/pavillon.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[106210,92396,75297,105845,22512],"class_list":["post-253040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-5-18-21","tag-daniel-boulud","tag-midtown","tag-one-vanderbilt","tag-restaurants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}