THE FRENCH PAVILIONArguably, the most successful foreign restaurant at the Fair was Le Restaurant du Pavillon de France. Its financial backing was provided by Jean Drouant and Louis Barraya, brothers-in-law who owned or managed, between them, seven restaurants in and around Paris. Their restaurants included the Cafe de Paris, the Pavillon d'Armenonville, the Pre Catelan, Fouquet's, Drouant Place Gaillon, Pavillon Royale, and Bois de Boulogne.
With additional financial help from the French Line, owners of the Normandie and other great ocean liners, Drouant and Barraya drew on their own financial resources to construct a semi-outdoor restaurant on the roof of the French Pavilion with tall windows overlooking the Lagoon of Nations and its nightly fireworks displays. A staff of almost one hundred cooks, waiters, wine stewards, and maitres d'hotel were recruited from Drouant's and Barraya's restaurants and from elsewhere in France. The general manager of the French Restaurant, as it came to be called, was Henri Soule, the manager and chief of staff at the three-star Cafe de Paris. Soule had worked as a waiter, captain, and maitre d'hotel in a half-dozen establishments in Paris and in southwestern France, beginning at age fourteen. After working his way up to become the manager of the Cafe de Paris, the thirty-six-year-old Soule was to spend the summers of 1939 and 1940 in New York City.
The French Restaurant opened on May 9, 1939 with a special party for Count Rene Doynel Saint-Quentin, the French ambassador; Grover Whalen, the president of the Fair; and 275 other guests. The next day, the French Restaurant began serving lunch and dinner to ordinary fair goers, and soon the lines of customers extended out the doors. The restaurant served up to 500 lunches and 1000 dinners per day in multiple seatings. During May, 18,041 meals were served. During June, that figure grew to 26,510. By the time the Fair closed for the winter on October 31, 136,261 meals had been served.
The food was French haute cuisine, with no concessions to American expectations or taste. One could order gigot d'agneau, homard l'americaine, or poularde en champagne that was prepared with the same expertise and quality ingredients as could be found at the Cafe du Paris. The food was served Russian-style, as it was at all first-class Paris restaurants: whole roasts or fish were brought to the table on silver platters by tuxedoed captains and maitres d'hotel, presented to the guests, and then expertly carved and served on hot plates. Flaming crepes Suzettes were prepared tableside and served with a flourish. When the nightly fireworks display began over the Lagoon of Nations, the lights in the restaurant would be dimmed and service would stop while the sky lit up with multi-colored explosions.
The Fair reopened in the spring of 1940, but the mood was different and fewer fair goers came to New York. The weather was rainy that summer, and attendance suffered. Even worse, France, Poland, and Great Britain were now at war with Germany. Germans occupied Paris in June 1940, and the Vichy government, headquartered in the south of France, was sympathetic to the Germans. Overseas travel was dangerous because German U-boats patrolled the shipping lanes, sinking ships registered in enemy countries. Most of the French Restaurant staff were essentially homeless, lost between two countries. Although Henri Soule had returned home in the autumn of 1939 to join the French army, he was sent back to New York to reopen the French Restaurant. By the time the Fair closed for good in October 1940, only 85,365 meals had been served, a significant reduction from the previous year.
