The Lutece Cookbook Review

The Lutece Cookbook amply demonstrate why Lutece was the top rated US restaurant for almost 30 years while Andres Soltner and his wife ran it.  It is filled with the same unpretentious, but classic french recipes, the same friendly and approachable feel and the same unbeleivably outstanding end result that Andres brought to Restaurant Lutece.

I am generally not a fan of lengthy biographicals in cookbooks (after all I am generally buying them for the recipes) but somehow the extensive comments and history seem to make the recipes come more to life and encourage you to experiment and to stretch yourself to try some of the more difficult and time consuming techniques.  Knowing when a true master chef has found shortcuts acceptable and perhaps more important when and why he found them unacceptable and unable to give the desired results leads you to appreciate the rationale of classic french technique.

The broad range of recipes (despite the forays into reminesence) are rewarding and I have yet to find a single recipe that does not satisfy.  Even where I have been taught and/or used different approaches to the same recipe I have found either advantages in preparation or end result in utilising Chef Soltner's approach.

If you love classic French cuisine without the haughtiness that the Classic French Restaurant was famous for, then this cookbook is for you.  It is published recently enough that it does not feel dated and uses modern kitchen appliances and materials, but retains the Classical French feel of using the best ingredients and efficiently using every scrap of them.

It also offers a range of Alsatian dishes that complement the more Parisian and Burgundian dishes that are the cookbooks principle focus.  Mr. Soltner gives proper deference to his roots and to his influences and yet lets his originality and exacting standards show through.  An outstanding cookbook from an unforgettable and much missed Restaurant.