"I couldn't get the raw materials," Mr. Soltner told Nation's Restaurant News decades later. "No chanterelles, no Dover sole. The bread was miserable." This highlights the initial struggles he faced.
Their debut was inauspicious. New York Times restaurant critic Craig Claiborne called it "impressively elegant and conspicuously expensive" and did not wax ecstatic about the food, awarding one star.
Mr. Soltner, then 27, accepted, and Lutèce opened in 1961 on the ground floor of a Manhattan brownstone. Surmain ran the front of the house while Mr. Soltner oversaw the kitchen for $95 per week.
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