He is credited with having "trained an entire generation of French chefs and New York restaurant owners."[5] He is also credited with using Siberia to describe the least desirable seats in a restaurant.[6]
Biography
Soulé was a captain at the Café de Paris before becoming the maître d'.[7]
At the request of the French government, he came to the United States to run the Le Restaurant Français[8] at the 1939 World's Fair. He did not return to France at the end of the Fair due to the German occupation.[9] He opened Le Pavillon in 1941,[10] considered the most influential French restaurant in America in the 1940s and 1950s.[11]
In his autobiography The Apprentice,[12] noted chef Jacques Pepin describes Soulé, whom he worked for at Le Pavilion, as being exploitative and abusive to his employees, including his then head chef Pierre Franey. Soule used hired criminals to physically threaten his staff when they demanded increased pay. A goon lifted Pepin physically off the ground after an initial protest, which was suppressed. However, Soulé could not keep his employees from departing en masse for other employment, which they did: Le Pavilion shut down shortly thereafter.
When he died, New York Times restaurant critic Craig Claiborne said "we had lost 'the Michelangelo, the Mozart, the Leonardo of the French restaurant in America.'"[13] One source states he died of a stroke at La Côte Basque.[14] Another source says he died of a heart attack.[15]
