Remembering André Soltner, a French Chef Who Changed American Dining Forever

In 1947 in the French city of Mulhouse, Alsace, a 15-year-old boy named André Soltner began his kitchen apprenticeship at the Hôtel du Parc, sparking what was to become one of the more storied and influential careers in culinary history. Chef Soltner died on January 19, 2025 in Charlottesville, Virginia at the age of 92, leaving behind a legacy as a restaurateur, educator, mentor, and friend to scores of people in the restaurant industry, and as a pivotal figure in the transformation of American dining.

Soltner, born in Thann, France in 1932, emigrated to the United States in 1961 to become the first chef at Andre Surmain's French fine dining temple Lutèce in New York City. He took on a partnership role in 1964 and in 1972, he became the sole proprietor of the restaurant, which Vogue included in its "Les Six" canon of "grand luxe" dining establishments in the city, alongside La Caravelle, La Grenouille, Quo Vadis, Lafayette, and La Côte Basque. (The last of these, Le Grenouille, completed its final service in September, 2024.) Though Soltner may have cleaved to that "luxe" and haute ethos in his original run at the restaurant, renegade restaurant critic Seymour Britchky clocked Soltner's vibe shift upon Surmain's departure.

Related: André Soltner's Alsatian Pizza

"During the first decade or so of its existence, the kitchen at Lutèce turned out the best restaurant food obtainable in New York," Britchky wrote in a 1979 review of the restaurant. "At the same time, certain members of the dining room staff, with the encouragement of one of the establishment's proprietors, did what they could to keep people from enjoying it."

But under Soltner's stewardship, the ice melted and Britchky celebrated the course correction. "Today Lutèce is the most charming and relaxed of New York's famous restaurants. Anyone who is uncomfortable here is uncomfortable," he wrote. (The notoriously gruff and grouchy writer went on to co-author the James Beard Award-nominated The Lutèce Cookbook with Soltner in 1995.)

By all accounts, that thaw wasn't a fluke but rather a hallmark of Soltner's influence on the spaces and souls he encountered throughout his long career. In 1984, Food & Wine profiled Soltner in a feature titled “Great International Restaurateurs in America: Five Who Lead the Way,”celebrating him alongside Germaine Swanson, Piero Selvaggio, Cecilia Chiang, and Willy Coln as foreign-born restaurant owners who educated American palates and "provid[ed] dining experiences that open our eyes to the infinite wonders of the table."

Related: André Soltner's Roasted Halibut with Vegetables en Papillote

"Cuisine in America has been democratized," Soltner told writers Stanley Dry and Catherine Fredman. "Twenty years ago only a select group came to restaurants like this. Today, young people who are not rich will save little by little for six months or a year and come here. The whole evening is an education for them."

"Cooking progresses. If you don't go forward, you go backwards. The pot of change boils for a while, but only the good parts remain. The brouhaha over nouvelle cuisine is finished, but we will never go back to the way we cooked before."

André Soltner

Accounts vary as to if Soltner missed two, four, or five days in the kitchen during his decades at Lutèce, working the majority of that time alongside his wife, Simone, who served as the restaurant's hostess. (She preceded him in death in 2016.) By 1994, citing exhaustion, he sold his stake to Ark Restaurants. But rather than hitting the slopes full time (Soltner was an avid skier who finished first in the 45 and older category of the Chefs' Ski Race for charity in 1980), he traded saucepans for a syllabus and took on the role of dean of classic studies at the French Culinary Institute in New York City, now the International Culinary Center. There, he worked alongside Jacques Pépin, Jacques Torres, Alain Sailhac, and other luminaries of the food world to pass the craft of cooking on to future generations.

In a recent episode of the Tinfoil Swans podcast, chef Bobby Flay spoke of the influence Soltner had on him, starting with his parents treating him to lunch at Lutèce for his eighteenth birthday. "André Soltner, just the greatest, would come to the table in his chef hat and chef coat and say, 'What can I make for you today?' He would go through the menu. It was very serious, very French, fancy, very significant," Flay recalled.

"But later on in my career, being able to have a real conversation with him, he would tell stories about the fact that he had the restaurant for 30 or 35 years and he took maybe two days off the entire time. That was the old school and obviously the world of restaurants has changed a lot since then, but there's something to be said for it. One of the things that I've always made an important part of my routine is cooking in my restaurants all the time."

In a previous episode of Tinfoil Swans, 1988 F&W Best New Chef Daniel Boulud gleefully recalled what it felt like to have Soltner as the featured guest chef in the second issue of his self-published newsletter in December, 1988. "André Soltner, imagine! He was my hero, the person I looked up to as a young chef in New York because we had to respect and look at the generation before you."

Related: The Secret to Daniel Boulud's Success Is Down in a Smelly Cellar in Lyon

Though Soltner was classically trained — and vocally defied categorizations of his own food as "classical" or "nouvelle" — he was neither hidebound nor beholden to technique if he felt it would interfere with someone's pleasure. "Cooking to me is very personal. It is a matter of love — you have to bring the feeling from inside. My mother gave me this love of food. She cooked with love, and I am still under this influence," he told Dry and Fredman.

"Take two men, a gastronome and one who knows nothing about cooking. Cook for both of them," he continued. "The gastronome can analyze the food and tell you why he likes it. The man who knows nothing about cooking cannot do that but he can recognize good food. If you have cooked from the heart, he will know it."

In 2018, Food & Wine named Soltner's recipe for Potato and Egg Pie with Bacon and Crème Fraîche as one of its 40 greatest of all time.

Related: André Soltner's Caramelized Fruit with Rosemary

Upon the announcement of Soltner's death, tributes poured in from around the culinary world.

2023 F&W Best New Chef Isabella Coss, who helms the pastry department at Lutèce (unrelated) in Washington, D.C., alongside her husband, chef-partner Matt Conroy, recalled Soltner warmly in an Instagram post. "He was a great chef, a kind soul, and a true legend. I was lucky enough to meet him because he came to Lutèce every year for dinner. He always had the funniest stories — like asking if we hunted the frogs ourselves, because that’s how he used to do it!"

Union Square Hospitality Group founder and restaurateur Danny Meyer recalled Soltner's response to a chef at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen who asked him how he would handle being asked to cook a steak well-done: "A guest who orders his steak well done obviously prefers it that way. I am confident that no one can make a better tasting well-done steak than I do. So of course I cook it his way, with pleasure.”

1988 F&W Best New Chef Thomas Keller shared "First, an idol. Then, a mentor. And later, a friend. That is how I will remember Chef André Soltner. … We also engaged in reflective conversations, where he would share his wisdom and experiences, and I would learn and grow. Always kind. Always curious. Always dedicated to our profession. He has left an indelible mark on me and my peers. Chef Soltner once said he’d like to be remembered for 'giving a lot of pleasure to people through my cooking.' And that he did. And so much more."

Soltner is survived by his sister, Marie Rose Vandevoorde, and his partner of eight years, Maryvonne Gasparini, who he was visiting at the time of his death.

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