GEORGES AUGUSTE ESCOFFIER’S LIFE

Ninety years ago, the Carlton Hotel in London had the most famous restaurant in the world under a chef called Georges Auguste Escoffier. Many young chefs trained there and carried the excellence of French cuisine to countries all over the world. Escoffier started cooking at his uncle’s restaurant in Nice in 1859, when he was thirteen. At nineteen, he moved to Paris to the famous Petit Moulin Rouge. He stayed there for many years, married, and had two sons and a daughter. In 1884, he moved to Monte-Carlo as Directeur de Cuisine at the Grand Hotel and in summer he worked at the Hotel National in Lucerne, Switzerland. Here he met César Ritz and in 1890 they both went to London to manage the Savoy Hotel there. Later, they opened the Ritz in Paris and the Carlton in London.

At the Carlton, he introduced the first à la carte menu. At large banquet-style meals, Escoffier abandoned a practice called service a la francaise (service in the French style), in which collections of dishes of all kinds were served at table simultaneously; instead, the French chef chose to standardize service a la russe (service in the Russian style), in which each course is presented in the order that it appears on the menu. Also during this time the French chef introduced and perfected some of his many innovations to cookery, restaurant service, and kitchen organization. Departing from the style of previous chefs, Escoffier simplified the art of cooking, doing away with excessive garnishes, heavy sauces, and elaborate presentations.

When he was seventy-three years old, Escoffier returned to Monte-Carlo but still worked for another fifteen years. Towards the end of his life he was especially famous in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Frankfurt, Zurich, Prague and New York. His book ‘Le Guide Culinaire’ still contains all that is best in Classical French and International cookery.

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 902