Free The United States of Arugula by David Kamp

portioning out servings of poached salmon and crabmeat omelet from the
buffet froid
, the prominently displayed cold buffet table that was another requisite flourish of the time. (Franey was granted plenty of latitude in preparing dishes for the
buffet froid
, and his prowess there is probably what convinced Soulé that he would one day be worthy of being Le Pavillon’s head chef.)
    Le Pavillon was important in and of itself, but it became even more so as the decades advanced and its employees opened their own places. Directly or indirectly, Soulé’s palace begat the “Le” and “La” restaurants that reestablished New York as a major gastronomic city in the mid-twentieth century: La Caravelle, Le Périgord, La Côte Basque, La Grenouille, Le Cygne, and Le Mistral, to name but a few. (Charles Masson, who opened La Grenouille, the only direct descendant of Le Pavillon still in operation at the time of this book’s publication, was part of the original ‘39 World’s Fair crew.) As New York’s contingent of sophisticated diners grew, the phrase “He worked under Soulé” became a tipster’s catchphrase, the mark of a place worth checking out.
    For a quarter of a century, until his death in 1966, Soulé was the undisputed godhead of American fine dining, and even Fernand Point conceded that Soulé had gotten it right—in a gesture of acknowledgment, Point, in 1949, let Soulé in on a share of his supply of a rare first-growth Burgundy. Though New York never lacked for flamboyant restaurateurs, Soulé was a new breed of food figure, an object of obsession, curiosity, and sycophancy among his wealthy clients and the press. The
New York
magazine restaurant critic Gael Greene, who endeared herself to Soulé late in his life, described the proprietor as “a flirtatious five-foot-five cube of amiability” (to
her
, anyway) who was also a “showman, snob, perfectionist, martinet, con man,wooer, and wooed master of haute cuisine.” Le Pavillon itself, she wrote, smelled “buttery, with hints of rum from the sauce anglaise and vague whiffs of almond.” *
    The New York rich had never encountered a character quite like Soulé, a man of peculiar prejudices and ceremonies—Franey remembered him always beginning the dinner service by “raising both of his arms above his head and vibrating them the way a minstrel singer might,” evidently so that the sleeves of his shirt would jut out of his tuxedo just so, revealing the gold cuff links given to him by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Despite being comically
pingouin-like
in appearance, Soulé glided rather than waddled, and showered favored guests with his peculiar brand of obsequiousness, which, utterly devoid of warmth, put
them
on point, obligating them to try the special
plat du jour
whose last portions he had reserved, he insisted, just for them. The VIPs, like the Windsors and the Kennedys, were seated by Soulé in the front of the restaurant, in the section that came to be known as the
royale
, while lessers were seated farther back, and nobodies were seated in an alcove off to the side, out of view of the
royale.
Here, the very American notion of a “power table” was born. †
    His clientele reveled in exchanging tales about Soulé. There was the time that a customer, dispassionately informed by the proprietor that no table would be available for at least an hour, flew into a rage and slapped Soulé smack on his bald pate. With one right uppercut, Soulé knocked the man unconscious and had his busboys collect the interloper and carry him out tothe curb. In another instance, some Pavillon regulars, vacationing one summer in Soulé’s native Basque country, made a rare spotting of the chubby restaurateur out of context, strolling his old stomping grounds in Saubrigues, near Bayonne in southwest France, dressed in baggy shorts and a white cap. Asked by the tourists if he was indeed who they thought he was, Soulé brusquely said, “You must be mistaken,” and