Page 141 - Livre Beau Rivage Palace

lapels, deluxe hotels parade their carving tables at the dining-room 20. Various reports by the board of directors in the Grand Hôtel archives.
door as a proud symbol of the glorious return of gastronomy. 21. A good but slightly earlier example is Napoleon III’s service of a hundred place
settings, items from which can be seen at the Museum of Decorative Art in Paris. Marc

Catering, cuisine and table service are key elements of the de Ferrière le Vayer, Odile Nouvel-Kammerer, ‘Le Grand surtout argenté de Napoléon III
et le service des Cent Couverts’ in Versailles et les tables royales en Europe, Château de
luxury hotel business. True, it has taken a long time to return 22. Alexandre Grimod de la Reynière, Manuel des Amphitryons, op. cit.
Versailles, RMN, 1993, pp. 371-381.
gastronomy to the status and standard it enjoyed at the beginning 23. La Tour d’Argent archives.
24. Christofle company archives, see various catalogues from 1889 to the most recent
of the nineteenth century. Clearly, however, a luxury hotel edition for the hotel division. Ercuis company archives. The duck press still features in
the Ercuis catalogue.
cannot exist without offering food worthy of its standing. That 25. Alain Drouard, Histoire des cuisiniers en France, XIX e -XX e siècles, op. cit. and the Escoffier
Museum of Culinary Art at Villeneuve-Loubet.
is the real difference between a truly deluxe establishment and a 26. Marcel Rouff, Curnonsky, Introduction to La France Gastronomique, guide des merveilles
culinaires et des bonnes auberges françaises – La Touraine, A Michel, Paris, 1928.
straightforward, top-of-the-range hotel. 27. Jean-Pierre Quelin, ‘Confidentiel Véfour’ in Le Monde, 4 March 1998.
28. Alain Drouard, ‘La Nouvelle Cuisine en France dans le dernier tiers du XX e siècle’
in Alain Drouard and Jean-Pierre Williot (ed.), Histoire des innovations alimentaires, XIX
1. See Jean-Marc Lesur, Les Hôtels de Paris, De l’auberge au palace, XIX e -XX e siècle, et XX e siècles, L’Harmattan, Paris 2007, pp. 207-217.
Editions Alphil, Neuchâtel, 2005. 29. This is what happened in the late 1980s to many of Paris’s luxury hotels, including
2. For a general approach to this issue see Marc de Ferrière le Vayer, Christofle, une the Louvre, Lutétia, Crillon, Ritz, Grand Hôtel and the Terminus Saint-Lazare, according
aventure industrielle, 1793-1993, Le Monde Editions, Paris, 1995. to the Christofle company archives. Christofle had to restore all the silverware which, in
3. Rebecca Spang, The invention of the restaurant: Paris and Modern gastronomic culture, many cases, it had supplied decades earlier. These items were on show at the Grand Hôtel
HUP, Harvard, 2001. during the reception jointly organised by all these hotels to celebrate the publication
4. Eugène Briffault, Paris à table, Slatkine, Paris 1980, new edition of the 1846 of a book devoted to them, Marc Gaillard, Etienne Bernard, Palaces et Grands-Hôtels,
publication. ces lieux qui ont une âme, Atlas, Paris, 1993.
5. Alain Drouard, Histoire des cuisiniers en France, XIX e -XX e siècles, Ellipses, Paris, 2004.
6. See catalogue for the exhibition L’Art culinaire au XIX e siècle, Antonin Carême, Délégation
à l’action artistique de la ville de Paris, Paris, 1984, and the writings of the famous
chef and pastrycook, especially in Le cuisinier parisien ou l’art culinaire français au
XIX e siècle, Paris, 1833.
7. Alexandre Grimod de la Reynière, Manuel des Amphitryons, Métailié, Paris, 1983. Jean-
Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, Physiologie du goût, Flammarion, Champs Collection, Paris,
1993. The Physiology of Taste, trs. Anne Drayton, Penguin Modern Classics, London, 1970.
8. Marie-Françoise Berneron-Couvenhes, Les Messageries Maritimes, l’essor d’une grande
compagnie de navigation maritime française, 1851-1894, PUPS, Paris, 2007.
9. Alain Corbin, Le territoire du vide: l’Occident et le désir du rivage, 1750-1840,
Flammarion, Paris, 1990, Brigitte Schroeder-Gudehus, Anne Rasmussen, Les fastes du
progrès, le guide des expositions universelles, 1851-1992, Flammarion, Paris, 1992,
Edourd Vasseur, L’Exposition Universelle de 1867, Dactylogramme, Université de Paris IV,
Paris, 2005.
10. Jean-Marc Lesur, Les Hôtels de Paris, De l’auberge au palace, XIX e -XX e siècle,
op. cit. pp. 63-80.
11. The Grand Hôtel archives are an excellent source of information on this subject.
They are also a rare example of well-preserved hotel archives.
12. Pascal Biossel, Grand Hôtel, Café de la Paix, deux siècles de vie parisienne, Italiques,
Paris, 2004.
13. Marie-Françoise Berneron-Couvenhes, ‘La croisière du luxe au demi-luxe, le cas des
Messageries Maritimes, 1850-1960’ in Entreprises et Histoire, dossier Le Luxe,
no 46, April 2007, Paris, pp. 34-55.
14. L’Illustration, 20 October 1855. Press cuttings relating to the Grand Hôtel are kept
in the hotel archives.
15. Guide Joanne, Paris, 1862, article on the Grand Hôtel.
16. The same is said about Geneva in Laurent Tissot, ‘L’hôtellerie de luxe à Genève
(1830-2000), de ses espaces à ses usages’ in Entreprises et Histoire, dossier Le Luxe,
no. 46, April 2007, Paris, pp. 17-33.
17. Paris et ses cafés, Exhibition catalogue, Action artistique de la ville de Paris, Paris
2004. Pascal Boissel, Café de la Paix: 1862 à nos jours, 120 ans de vie parisienne,
Anwile, Paris, 1980.
18. Claudia Kanowski, Tafelsilber fûr die Bourgeoisie: Produktion und private Kundschaft des
Pariser Goldschmiedefirmen zwischen Second Empire und Fin de Siecle, Mann, Berlin, 2000
and the Christofle company archives. See also, Marc de Ferrière le Vayer ‘Christofle,
150 ans d’art et de rêves’, in Dossier de l’art, no. 2, 1991.
19. Although it no longer exists it can be recognised from the glass-plate photographs
taken before it was delivered. Christofle company archives, Saint-Denis (93).
Menu served on the opening day of the Beau-Rivage, 25 March 1861.

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