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.
