“Vous présente sa grande carte et vous souhaite bon appétit.”
Lutèce
February 16, 1961–February 14, 2004
French
Ownership:
Ark Restaurants (1994–2004)
André Soltner (c.1961–1994)
Andre Surmain (1961–1973)
Executive Chef:
David Féau (2001–2004)
Eberhard Müller (1994–2000)
André Soltner (1961–1994)
Location:
249 East 50th Street
Literature:
Linda Fairstein, Night Watch (2012) [Murder mystery based around an attempt to recreate Lutèce]:
“‘When my father opened Lutèce more than fifty years ago, Mike, he had this idea to make it the best restaurant in New York–more likely, in the world. He had a great imagination and spirit to go with his style. The first thing he did was buy a town house. Do you know how many restaurant owners in New York own their buildings too?’
‘No idea,’ Mike said.
‘Fewer than one percent. One percent, do you see?'”
Walter Tevis, The Steps of the Sun (1983) [Science fiction novel taking place in 2063]:
“Lutèce and The Four Seasons are gone, and there’s a midtown woodstand where Le Madrigal used to be. And the stores! Bergdorf Goodman is gone, and Saks and Cartier; Bloomingdale’s is a Greyhound bus depot.”
Bret Easton Ellis, The Rules of Attraction (1987): Briefly mentioned as the site of a “somber birthday dinner” (Picador, 2006: 267).
William Goldman, Marathon Man (1974)
Ian Fleming, Agent 007 in New York (1963)
Film:
The Last Days of Disco (1998)
Other People’s Money (1991)
The Prince of Tides (1991)
Crossing Delancey (1988)
Wall Street (1987)
Arthur (1981)
A New Leaf (1971)
Television:
Julia (HBO Max; Episode 7, “Foie Gras,” April 28, 2022)
Mad Men (AMC; Season 2, Episode 1, “For Those Who Think Young,” July 27, 2008; Episode 3, “The Benefactor,” August 10, 2008; Episode 4, “Three Sundays,” August 17, 2008)
Theatre:
The Heidi Chronicles (Wendy Wasserstein, 1988)
Last Summer at Bluefish Cove (Jane Chambers, 1980)
Publications:
Barnard, Christopher. “Saying Goodbye to the Prototype for Celebrity Chefs.” New York Times, April 6, 2025.
Frank, Mitch. “André Soltner, the Chef Behind Landmark New York Bistro Lutèce, Dies at 92.” Wine Spectator, January 22, 2025 (illustrated).
Sytsma, Alan. “André Soltner Was the Best Chef in New York.” Grub Street, January 21, 2025 (illustrated).
Kinsman, Kat. “Remembering André Soltner, a French Chef Who Changed American Dining Forever.” Food & Wine, January 20, 2025.
Grimes, William. “André Soltner, Famed Chef at New York’s Lutèce, Dies at 92.” New York Times, January 18, 2025 (illustrated).
Kinsman, Kat, host. “Bobby Flay and the Review That Made His Career.” Tinfoil Swans (Food & Wine). Audio podcast, October 29, 2024: 8:40-10:09.
“Lutece: Midtown East Condos Rise at the Site of One of New York’s Most Beloved Restaurants.” City Realty, July 21, 2020. [Regarding the redevelopment of the Lutèce site into a condo building named for the restaurant. Article updated December 13, 2022, and retitled, “Closings Commence at 249 East 50th Street, New Residential Building on Former Site of Lutèce.”]
Roberts, Sam. “Andre Surmain, Who Fed the Elite in Luxe Style at Lutèce, Dies at 97.” New York Times, February 1, 2018.
“André Soltner’s Lutèce Vinaigrette.” The Food Dictator. Blog, January 21, 2018. [Features recipe for Lutèce vinaigrette dressing.]
Kral, Georgia. “The ‘Mad Men’ Haunts of NYC.” AM New York, May 17, 2015.
Siegel, Allison. “Inside the Ruins of the Lutèce Restaurant in NYC, of Mad Men Fame.” Untapped Cities, February 25, 2014. [Images of Lutèce interior in 2014. Article incorrectly cites year of closure as 1994.]
Myers, Dan. “Menu of the Week: Lutèce, 1980.” The Daily Meal, August 2, 2013.
King Hoge, Sharon. “Singular Meal.” Cottages & Gardens, April 9, 2013. [Regarding a charity event in which Andre Soltner recreated Lutèce specialties for attendees.]
Colacello, Bob. “Here’s to the Ladies Who Lunched!” Vanity Fair, January 30, 2012. [Featured in the February 2012 issue.]
Sietsema, Robert. “Our 10 Best NYC Restaurants of the Last Two Centuries.” Village Voice, January 14, 2011. [Lutèce is ranked 5th; The Coach House and Le Pavillon also make the list.]
Bernardo, Mark. Mad Men’s Manhattan: The Insider’s Guide. Berkeley, California: Roaring Forties Press, 2010: 2, 4, 16-17.
Grimes, William. Appetite City: A Culinary History of New York. New York: North Point Press, 2009: 259.
Greene, Gael. “The Most Important Restaurants in Forty Years.” Insatiable Critic. Blog, September 30, 2008. [Originally written for New York magazine’s 40th anniversary issue. Maxwell’s Plum also makes the list.]
Stern, Robert A. M., David Fishman, and Jacob Tilove. New York 2000: Architecture and Urbanism Between the Bicentennial and the Millennium. New York: Monacelli Press, 2006: 1066-1077 (illustrated). [Features a proposed design for the restaurant’s back garden room.]
Goldman, John J. “Famed New York French Restaurant and Patrons Bid One Another Adieu.” Los Angeles Times, February 15, 2004. [Published in the Chicago Tribune on February 16 as “Ah, Creme de la Creme Lutece Dies a la Mode.”]
Collins, Glenn, and William Yardley. “Eat and Be Merry: Tomorrow 2 Classics Die.” New York Times, February 13, 2004.
Asimov, Eric. “C’est la Fin! Lutèce Closing After 43 Years.” New York Times, February 11, 2004.
Chung, Jen. “Au Revoir, Lutece.” Gothamist, February 11, 2004.
Rossant, Juliette. Super Chef: The Making of the Great Modern Restaurant Empires. New York: Free Press, 2004: 4, 54, 83-84, 86.
Damodaran, Aswath. Investment Valuation: Tools and Techniques for Determining the Value of Any Asset, 2nd ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2002: 764-765. [Lutèce used to demonstrate restaurant valuation.]
Grimes, William. “Lutèce Leaves the Past and Steps into the Future.” New York Times, June 6, 2001: F1.
Sokolov, Raymond. “Aging Grandes Dames: Three Culinary Giants of New York, Revisited.” Wall Street Journal, March 23, 2001: W1 (illustrated).
Soltner, Andre, and Seymour Britchky. The Lutèce Cookbook. New York: Alfred Knopf, 2001. [Features 333 recipes.]
O’Neill, Molly. “Fresh Prince: Lutèce’s Chef, Eberhard Müller, Grows Much of What He Serves.” New York Times Magazine, October 24, 1999: 103. [Features Müller’s recipes for potato-and-leek soup with white truffle; turbot poached in tarragon broth; warm porcini salad with mesclun and black-truffle vinaigrette; and mango-pineapple tartlets (illustrated).]
Greene, Gael. “The Ghost and Mr. Müller.” New York 28, 39 (October 2, 1995): 86-87 (illustrated).
Witchel, Alex. “Life After Lutèce Is Just Fine. Delicious, in Fact.” New York Times, June 21, 1995: C1.
Daria, Irene. Lutèce: A Day in the Life of America’s Greatest Restaurant. New York: Random House, 1993.
“If Lutèce Is Open, Soltner Is at the Stove.” USA Today, September 10, 1987: 4D.
Burros, Marian. “What Makes André Soltner Tick? Lutèce at 25.” New York Times, January 29, 1986: C1, C8 (illustrated).
Claiborne, Craig. “When Soup at Lutèce Was $2.25.” New York Times, March 21, 1984: C1.
Greene, Gael. “Gael Greene Ranks the Great French Restaurants of New York.” New York Magazine, February 7, 1983: 29-30 (illustrated).
“Loving Lutece is like love in a glorious long-running marriage. Suspecting, even knowing, the possibility of hotter thrills in playing around, you bask in the treasured certainty…pleased…proud…amazed at how good it stays…astonished by its capacity for sudden bursts of brilliance, again and again” (30).
Sheraton, Mimi. “New Dishes at **** Restaurants.” New York Times, November 5, 1982: C1. [Lutèce and The Coach House are included among only four New York restaurants to maintain four stars from the Times at the time of writing.]
Beard, James. “Fine Dining in Style – That Sums Up New York’s Lutece.” Boston Globe, August 4, 1982: S47. [Features a recipe for Lutèce’s fricasse de volaille aux echalotes.]
Brass, Dick. “Critics’ Choice: The 25 Greatest Restaurants in America.” Playboy Magazine 27, 6 (June 1980). [Lutèce tops the list as Playboy’s “greatest restaurant in America”; La Caravelle and The Coach House also make the list.]
Sheraton, Mimi. “Restaurants: An Almost Perfect French Experience.” New York Times, November 4, 1977: 70.
Sokolov, Raymond A. “It’s Worth Saving Up for a Taste of This Culinary Splendor.” New York Times, January 14, 1972: 38. [Sokolov gives Lutèce the highest possible rating of four stars for food and four triangles for atmosphere, service, and decór.]
Greene, Gael. Bite: A New York Restaurant Strategy for Hedonists, Masochists, Selective Penny Pinchers and the Upwardly Mobile. New York: W. W. Norton, 1971.
Claiborne, Craig. “Restaurant on Review: Lutece Both Elegant and Expensive.” New York Times, March 28, 1961: 38 (illustrated).
Notable Guests:
James Beard (Chef)
Daniel Boulud (Chef & Restaurateur)
Julia Child (Chef)
Bobby Flay (Chef): Celebrated his 18th birthday with a lunch at Lutèce. (1)
Mick Jagger (Singer)
Judith Jones (Writer & Editor)
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (Former First Lady of the United States)
Henry Kissinger (Former United States Secretary of State)
Marilyn Monroe (Actress & Model)
Notes:
The restaurant was named for Lutetia, the Roman name for Paris. (2)
André Soltner and his wife Simone (“who ran the dining room”) lived above the restaurant, on the fourth floor. Soltner continued to live above the restaurant after he sold it in 1994 and became dean of Soho’s French Culinary Institute, and he was still living there at the time of the restaurant’s closure. (3)
Soltner missed only 5 nights at the restaurant during his 34 years as executive chef. (4)
In 1972, W Magazine presented “Les Six,” “the last bastions of grand luxe dining in New York”: Lutèce, La Grenouille, La Caravelle, La Côte Basque, Lafayette, and Quo Vadis. (5)
Two different menus were presented to guests, one featuring prices to the host, and menus without prices to the rest of the table. (6)
In 1999, a second Lutèce was opened in the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, which remained open after the 2004 closure of the New York restaurant. (7)
The restaurant featured a mural by Jean Pages. (8)
The townhouse in which Lutèce was located had previously been home to James Beard’s first cooking school, which he ran with future Lutèce owner Andre Surmain. (9)
Related Restaurants:
La Caravelle; Quo Vadis (inclusion in W Magazine’s 1972 list of “Les Six”)
Menu:
Monday, May 5, 1980 (New York Public Library)
International Gourmet Club, Lunch, Saturday, March 1, 1969 (New York Public Library)
Date unknown, after 1968 (Culinary Institute of America)
(1) Kinsman, 2024.
(2) Goldman, 2004.
(3) Asimov, 2004.
(4) ibid.
(5) Colacello, 2012.
(6) Claiborne, 1961.
(7) Asimov, 2004.
(8) Roberts, 2018.
(9) Beard, 1982; Grimes, 2025.
Cover photo: Illustration by James McMullan. In Greene, Gael, “Gael Greene Ranks the Great French Restaurants of New York.” New York Magazine, February 7, 1983: 29. Accessed September 28, 2022.
The New York City Restaurant Archive 