Louis Felix Diat

Background

Louis Felix Diat was born on May 5, 1885, in Montmarault, France. He was the son of Louis Denis Diat, a shoemaker, and Anne Alajoinine.  A rather shy and awkward boy, often disciplined and ridiculed in school because he was left-handed, Diat was happiest when helping his mother and grandmother prepare hearty soups, stews, and pastries.  This experience gave him the desire to become a professional chef.  

Education

When he was fourteen his father purchased an apprenticeship for him in the Maison Calondre, a catering firm in Moulins, near Vichy.  After two years of rigorous training, followed by tours of duty in the kitchens of the Hotel Bristol and the Hotel du Rhin in Paris, Diat rose rapidly in the staid and hierarchical French culinary world.  

Career

In 1903 the Hotel Ritz in Paris, one of Europe's most exclusive and fashionable hotels, appointed him chef potager, and three years later he became an assistant saucier at the elegant new Ritz Hotel in London.  There under the tutelage of the chef de cuisines, Emile Malley, whose impeccable attire and gentlemanly demeanor he emulated as his professional ideal, Diat refined his skills, expanded his repertoire, and caught the eye of the celebrated chef August Escoffier.  

In 1910 William Harris and Robert W. Goelet built the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New York City.  On Escoffier's recommendation they chose Diat to organize its kitchens.  Diat arrived in the United States on October 8, 1910, applied for citizenship that November, and was naturalized in 1916. Diat considered his mission to establish a level of cuisine at the Ritz-Carlton equal to that of the finest European hotels.  With the full backing of the hotel's manager, Albert Keller, Diat spared no expense in his quest for culinary excellence.  Unable to procure certain vegetables on the wholesale market, he asked local farmers to grow them and subsidized their output.  Unhappy with the quality of the available cream, he eventually discovered, on a farm in Vermont, cream comparable to that produced in Normandy; it was shipped to the hotel daily.  Diat had huge tanks built to hold trout and lobsters; he installed a French bakery oven and imported a Parisian boulanger to run it.  Diat's domain covered two floors of the hotel basement and eventually included an ice cream plant, huge coffee roasters, a petisserie, and a fully equipped candy factory.  He supervised a staff of over 100 trained to the most exacting standards.  

The Ritz-Carlton had an aura of Old World luxury and elegance that made it the ideal backdrop for visiting European royalty, debutante balls, and society parties.  A string ensemble played in the beautifully decorated Palm Court; and ducks paddled around a water-lily pond in the rooftop Japanese garden.  The Ritz quickly became the favored dining spot of New York's rich and powerful.  The main reason for the hotel's success, however, was "Monsieur Louis, " as Diat was known to co-workers and gourmets, who turned it into a temple of French cuisine.  Nowhere in the United States could one dine on a more dazzling array of classic dishes, prepared with such skill and flair.  The best foie gras was used lavishly, truffles were sliced by the hour, and the finest cognacs and madeiras laced sauces and soups.

For forty-one years Diat's life was inseparable from that of the Ritz-Carlton.  From 1916 to 1929, while living in New Rochelle, New York, he used to come to the Ritz on Sunday morning, return home for lunch, and then come back to his job for dinner.  Still, he gave radio and newspaper interviews, lent his name and energy to countless efforts designed to improve the quality of American food, and wrote Cooking . .. la Ritz (1941), Louis Diat's Home Cookbook: French Cooking for Americans (1946), and Sauces, French and Famous (1951).  Unlike other great chefs of the era whose books were geared mainly to professionals, Diat sought to demystify French cuisine and explain it so that ordinary home cooks could understand and duplicate it.

On May 2, 1951, the Ritz-Carlton was forced to close, a victim of spiraling costs, rising real estate values, and its own undiminished luxury.  To the end Diat refused to compromise standards.  When auditors advised him to cut expenses by using less cream and butter, he threatened to leave unless quality was maintained.  It was.  As late as December 1950, $47, 000 a month was spent on provisions from more than fifty dealers, and the Ritz's kitchen staff of seventy-seven was one of the highest paid in the country.  

Although crushed by the demise of the Ritz, Diat remained active.  He turned to writing about food and cooking, and, in collaboration with Helen Ridley, a home economist, he reached an ever-growing audience in the pages of Gourmet magazine.  He was at work on his magnum opus, Gourmet's Basic French Cookbook (1961), when he died in New York City

Achievements

• Louis Diat is one of the chefs who have created vichyssoise soup, a simple but refined cold soup based on his mother's leek and potato soup.  Named after the famous spa near Diat's hometown, the soup first appeared on the Ritz menu in the summer of 1917 to stimulate appeties dulled by New York's heat.  It instantly became an all-weather American favorite.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Louis Diat's Home Cookbook: French Cooking for Americans

    (Louis Diat's Home Cookbook: French Cooking for Americans ...)

  • Gourmet's Basic French Cookbook

    (Spine is straight, binding is tight, pages are unamarked,...)

  • Cooking a la Ritz

    (Vintage cook book by the renowned chef of the Ritz-Carlto...)

  • Sauces, French and Famous

Personality

A tireless worker, a perfectionist obsessed with maintaining the highest standards, yet always patient and soft-spoken with his staff, Diat regularly put in fourteen-hour days, six days a week.

Connections

On January 20, 1913, Diat married Suzanne Clemence Prudhon; they had one child.

Father:

Louis Denis Diat

Mother:

Anne (Alajoinine) Diat

collaborator:

Helen Ridley

spoue:

Suzanne Clemence (Prudhon) Diat

References

• French Cooking for Americans