ISSUE 20, NEW ORLEANS CHEFS, Part 5: Lives from the Creole Age
Chefs and Restaurateurs worthy of Honor
More Lives from the Creole Age:
VICTOR BERO (1840-1904)
Belgian-born cook Victor Bero shared his first name with one of the greatest chefs of the golden age of New Orleans Restaurant Cuisine, Victor Martin. Much of Bero’s later career consisted in attempting to rewrite history by inscribing himself over Victor Martin’s identity and legacy. Bero emigrated to New York with his brother and sister in 1855, age fifteen. He arrived in New Orleans during the Federal Occupation of the city, in 1864, at age 24. He received his culinary training in New York hotels. He worked briefly in the city as an assistant cook before going to Houston to become chef at the Hutchins House in 1869. The Hutchins House was the pride of Houston, a commodious and stylish hotel beloved of politicians (including a faction called the Republican tea party in 1869!) and the preferred stopping place of visiting dignitaries. Bero directed the kitchen until the complete discharge and replacement of hotel personnel in October 1871. At this juncture he returned to New Orleans and found employment with Jules Martin of Victor’s Restaurant. Victor Martin had died in Mexico a short time before. Victor’s devolved to Jules’s nephew George Martin, who died in 1873. Bero, because he had experience as running a kitchen, became at this juncture the proprietor. His stewardship of this revered institution initially did not go well. When “Victor’s” burned in January 1874, a reporter noted the decline in the cuisine since George’s death. Victor Bero set about resurrecting the establishment In 1874, erecting the new version at 38 Bourbon Street and calling it Restaurant Victor. In 1875 he advertised that it was “the Cheapest Restaurant in the City.” Bero in the 1880s was absorbed in hotel ventures, becoming a partner in the Charpiot Hotel in Denver, opening the Hotel Chalmet on 100 St. Charles Street (with Xavier Faucon in charge of cuisine), and installing his son Victor Bero, Jr., as manager of Boarding Houses on Customhouse Street in 1885. In 1891 The Ocean Club at Grand Isle contracted Bero to do cuisine at the resort. Here is the menu for a Christmas Dinner by Bero published in the December 25, 1895 issue of the Times-Picayune:
Sometime during the latter 1880s, Leon Lamothe took controlling interest in Victor’s, and installed Eugene Camors as manager of the cuisine. During the 1890s Bero devoted himself to his social passions: the opera (he was an amateur singer), Freemasonry (he was a 32nd degree Mason), and club life. He died in 1904. A year later his wife appeared in bankruptcy court and the restaurant shut down. The collection of Bero’s recipes published in the 1937 edition of Bégué’s Recipes of Old New Orleans because of their 10 person banquet portions appear not to be the a la carte preparations used at Victor’s but the banquet portions used in the Ocean Club.
Sources: “Hutchins House,” Houston Union 1, 75 June 28, 1869), 3. “The Hutchins House,” Houston Union 4, 36 (October 13, 1871), 3. “Victor Bereo’s New Restaurant,” New Orleans Times 12, 6503 (December 15, 1874), 8. “Cheapest Restaurant in the City,” New Orleans Times (September 1,1875), 5. “Victor’s Restaurant,” New Orleans Times-Picayune (November 17, 1875), 1. “Personal Points,” Rocky Mountain News (July 29, 1879), 8. “Victor’s Restaurant,” New Orleans Times-Picayune (October 28, 1885), 4. “Summer Pleasures—Lucky ‘Ocean Club’ Member,” New Orleans Item (May 2, 1891), 2. [Obituary], Times Picayune 6-12-1904, 4. “Victor Bero, Caterer, and a Landmark of Good Living,” New Orleans Times-Picayune (June 12, 1904), 11. “Passing of Victor’s,” New Orleans-Times Picayune (July 25, 1905), 5.
XAVIER FRANCOIS FAUCON (1849-1930)
Arriving in New Orleans at age sixteen with his brother Octave in 1865 after the Civil War, Xavier Faucon was born at Nay in the Aquitaine in France. He had completed a kitchen apprenticeship in his native country before emigrating. Restaurateur Andre Camors installed him as head cook at his Pino’s Restaurant and Oyster Saloon when it revived at 23 St. Charles in September 1868. He remained the guiding hand in the cuisine of the restaurant after its rebranding to “Camors Restaurant” in 1871. The aging Camors brought his nephew Leon Lamothe to America to run take over the business. When Camors retired in 1873, Lamothe partered with Faucon and ran the business as “Lamothe & Facoun’s Camors Restaurant. Faucon hired cook Jules Dounrec to be his sous-chef and kept on Charles Soupein, Camors’s favorite line cook. Foucon’s partnership with Lamothe lasted three years and one half until Lamothe took complete control of the business. He renamed 23 St. Charles “Leon’s Restaurant.” Faucon took over Fritz Huppenbauer’s The United States Restaurant in January 1877. Because Huppenbauer, “a cook who would rank with the most celebrated artists of France,” had worked with Camors in the 1850s, he felt surrendering the business to Faucon kept a culinary tradition alive in the city. Huppenbauer removed to the lake resorts to ply his trade. In running the United States Restaurant, Xavier recruited his brother Octave to manage the front of the house. In Spring of 1881 Faucon realized that the location at 128 Common Street presented too great a challenge to make a commercial success. He shuttered the doors and was forced to hire himself out as a cook once again. First at Victor Bero’s Hotel Chalmet at 100 St. Charles, and then for a time at Moreau’s restaurant during the last years of Madam Eugene’s proprietorship and after the return of Charles Rhodes when Madam Eugene married and retired. There was too much good French food available in New Orleans and not enough available capital to launch a new restaurant under his control. His ambition and the need to support his wife Marie Pons and a half dozen children forced him to a decision. In 1889 he removed to Chattanooga Tennessee and opened Fauchon’s French Restaurant at 19 West 8th Street. For eight years it would be the foremost restaurant in the city. Yet the ambitious Fauchon wished a larger scope of activity and a greater portion of fame. He had trained his son Leon in the art of cookery and proposed that they collaborate in running a restaurant in the burgeoning city of Nashville. From 1899 to 1926 Fauchon’s French Restaurant was the classic fine dining establishment in the city. Xavier presided until 1908-09 when Leon became proprietor. Upon Leon’s death in 1926, Fouchon removed to Bixoli, Mississippi, a locale recommended by his friend, the restaurateur Francoise Sarte. He died in Biloxi at age eighty in 1930.
GABRIEL JULIEN (1797-1866]
Trained as a distiller and candy-maker in his Native France, Gabriel Julien came to New Orleans by way of England and Mexico, opening a store in 1830 at 30 Conde Street where he sold syrups, sugared fruits, pastilles, bonbons, gumballs, jujubes, nougat, pastry, cakes, and other sweets. His stock included Parisian imports as well as items manufactured on premises. Trained as a confiseur and pastry cook, he was among the most versatile knowledgeable professional culinarians in the city. In 1836 Julien took over the lease of the Restaurant D’”Orleans at 718 Orleans Street from restaurateur Camille Adrien Dupuy. The two story building, located opposite John Davis’s event space, the Salle d’Orleans (site of the famous quadroon balls), had been the foremost a la carte eating establishment in the city through the 1820s. Julien was its restaurateur during a more competitive era when Moreau’s, the newly opened Hotel St. Louis, and Victor’s Restaurant gave discerning diners a choice of cuisine in the French style. Despite the efflorescence of dining excellent, public hospitality was still a volatile enterprise in the 1830s. On December 4 1836, for instance, an American ruffian named Reynolds stabbed and killed Jules Barre as he was seated consuming a meal at the restaurant. He would manage the restaurant until turning it over the M. Aube in 1843. A French language notice shortly after Aube’s takeover proclaimed the service took place with exquisite elegance, the cuisine was the equal of the best in the city, and the wines the sort that excited Horace and Lucullus in ancient Rome! Gabriel Julien became the chef of the Hotel St. Charles after Walter Van Rennselaer stepped and presided over the cuisine of the city’s second great hotel in the later 1840s and early 50s. Sources: “Gabriel Julien,” Abeille (December 15, 1830), 4; “State of Louisiana versus Reynolds and Brady,” Times-Picayune (May 2, 1837), 2; “Restaurant d’Orleans,” Jeffersonian Republican (December 3, 1846), 3.
JOHN STRENNA (1820-1883)
A Corsican with the culinary ambition of a Napoleon, John Strenna came to New Orleans in 1843 and attached himself to Antoine Meissonier, a Parisian restaurateur who presided over the Commercial Restaurant at 52 Customhouse Street. When Meissoneir retired, selling out to Andre Camors and Fritz Huppenbauer, Strenna determined to launch his own place. In 1853 he opened “The John Restaurant” on 9 Carondelet Street. Aspiring to the single names status of the premier antebellum caterers—Victor, Moreau, Walter, Boudro, Miguel—he staffed his establishment with a crack unit of four Corsican and Italian waiters and promised the public that his “larder will always contain the best the market affords, and the liquors and wines will be of the choicest quality.” His access to premium alcohol enabled him to run a retail liquor business out of the restaurant. On the eve of the Civil War his property was assessed at $8,000, placing the business in the top of the second rank of eating houses. Strenna survived the war in good order, and at the opening of the 1865 season moved his premises in October 1865. “That famous resort of gourmets, and all lovers of those luxuries and delicacies, which, served up in the style that distinguishes John Strenna, of John’s Restaurant, contribute so much to the amenities of life, will find new comforts and accommodations provided them in his removal to the “Maison Doree,” No. 144 Canal Street.” Naming his new venue after the most famous restaurant in Paris, Strenna revealed the extent of his aspirations. Its scale, luxury, and fashionability made it the most brilliant dining space outside of the great hotels. The lower floor was “devoted to general entertainment,” while the upper stories offered elegantly furnished rooms “for private parties or entertainments.” The allure of the Maison Doree managed one transformation in the dining habits of the city. Strenna “succeeded in overcoming the prejudice our city lady residents had to visiting restaurants.” He boasted that his kitchen prepared its cuisines “with the most exquisite Parisian skill.” For three years Strenna kept his palace of Parisian cuisine afloat in a city attempting to reconstitute itself after the disruptions of war. At the beginning of the 1868 season, he surrendered his lease and packed his crew, decamping to 16-18 Bourbon Street. His restaurant became “John’s”. His pride scarcely dented, he styled himself the “prince of caterers,” but paid close attention to the wishes of his clientele. He was fortunate to have secured two talented cooks, John Pierre Abadie and Louis Soutelot, to work his kitchen. In 1873 he traveled to Paris and to Italy to replenish his culinary imagination. When he returned, he was energized. He kept his saloon open all Mardi Gras night. When the financial crisis of 1876 blossomed, he reduced prices. In the 1870s, he turned preparation of the cuisine to a series of cooks. A garrulous, sociable man, Strenna belonged to several clubs and associations, most importantly the Freemasons in which he rose to high rank. In November 1880, Strenna moved the restaurant across from the French Opera House on 182 Canal Street. He began to suffer from cardiac disease and edema. Well before his death in 1883, his wife assumed control of the restaurant, keeping it open through the 1880s. SOURCES: “The John Restaurant,” New Orleans Times-Picayune (October 1, 1853), 1. “The Maison Doree,” New Orleans Times (December 17, 1865), 10. [Closing of Maison Doree], New Orleans Times-Picayune (November 13, 1868), 7. “Personal,” New Orleans Times-Picayune (October 12, 1873), 4. “John’s Restaurant,” New Orleans Times-Picayune (February 15, 1874), 6. “John’s Restaurant,” New Orleans Times 13, 6806 (January 25, 1876), 3. “Restaurant Opening,” New Orleans Item (October 17, 1880), 1.“Death of John Strenna,” New Orleans Times-Picayune (July 18, 1883), 2.
JOSEPH VOEGTLE (1853-1916)
There is in the end not too great a gap between working for the benefit of the public at a public house and being the servant of the public as a governmental official. Joseph Voegtle was one of the public men who went from the hospitality trade to the political sphere. Born in Freidburg, Baden, in Germany, he came to the United States at age eighteen, worked through the 1870s as a waiter at Joseph Ziegler’s restaurant on Dauphine and bartender the Bismarck Saloon, the Phoenix House and at J. Baltz’s Saloon. He studied the management of the places that he worked and determined he could do a superior job of satisfying the public’s thirst and hunger. In 1883 he established the Joseph Voegtle Saloon on the corner of Poydras and St. Charles. It had the advantage of good location and capable bartenders; consequently, Voegtle made substantial money. There were qualities of personality, too, that worked in his favor. He radiated a spirit of sincerity that inspired trust, and manifested an industriousness that made powerful people wish to enlist him in enterprises. He became an expert in the city’s sewage system. He knew the tax code and city regulations by heart. He was an active participant in the Freemasonic Lodge and the city’s gentleman’s clubs. His comrades proved more than willing to extend him credit. In 1894 he took over management of the Cosmopolitan Hotel at 121 to 125 Royal Street from the Solari estate and opened the Cosmopolitan Cafe. A contemporary noted on the occasion of Voegtle’s assumption of power, “The Cosmopolitan recented opened in its present shape, is one of the cosiet and most comfortable hotels in the country. It is handsomely arranged and beautifully furnished. The restaurant on the ground floor is a perfect gem of a dining-room and there is no better chef than the artist who presides in cuisine of the establishment.” Voegtle had secured the services of X in the kitchen. He would direct it for twenty years until selling to Vic Le Beau in winter 1911. From 1900 until his death Voegtle divided his energies between public service and public hospitality. Elected to the Louisiana state senate, he served until 1914. He was an active member of the Sewarage and Water Board. In 1914 he was appointed postmaster of New Orleans. A year into his service he had a stroke. SOURCES: “New Hotels and Restaurants,” Times-Picayune (April 8, 1894), 10; “Joseph Voegtle Dies after Illness of Year,” Times-Picayune (May 10, 1916), 5.
MATHIEU VONDERBANK (1842-1897)
In June of 1868 the three story brick building at #42 Royal Street changed hands. It had been an auctioneer’s office. George Martin and several others in the hospitality business secured the property. “A first class lager beer saloon, with cold lunches and all sorts of fancy fixings in the epicurean line, and concert music in the evenings, will soon be opened.” Mathieu Vonderbank was a junior figure in the group that took over the building. Yet in certain respects, he was the essential figure, the man whose affability, sonorous voice (he was an enthusiastic singer), and liking for people made new customers feel welcome. Café Bismark catered to the German contingent in the city. Its early character is best adduced by its motto: “the best and coolest beer in the city.” Yet it was more than just a bar; the Café’s resident mini-string orchestra serenaded customers with Johann Strauss’s “Beautiful Blue Danube” Waltz, or scenes from popular operas. Each evening had dances, theatrical performances, and light concert music. In summer of 1873 “Col. Vanderbank” appears named as proprietor. Thirty one was young to be reckoned a colonel, but the title fell easily on anyone who had military service during the war and prospered afterwards.In February of 1875 Vonderbank revived the winter masquerade balls, a fixture of antebellum life in the city. The national financial depression, however, killed business. In June of 1875 the building was put up for sale. It did not find a buyer until summer of 1876 when W. Winkelman took possession of Café Bismark. Meanwhile Vonderbank rebounded, finding a promising locale at 126 Common Street. More restaurant than saloon, Vonderbank’s still made entertainment a feature of its hospitality. But his advertisements stressed food: “Meals served at all hours. All delicacies of the season constantly on hand.” Initially, the restaurant featured beer rather than wine or spirits—“Bavaria, Bohemian, and Vienna, Also Blatz Milwaukee Lager Beer.” Breakfasts cost 50 cents, dinners 75. In 1883 wines and liquors joined the beverage list. The surge in prosperty activated Vonderbank’s entrepreneurial spirit. When he learned that World Cotton Exhibition would be opened in New Orleans in 1884, he calculated the opportunities. In October 1883 he took over the St. James Hotel on Magazine Street and rebranded in Vonderbank’s Hotel. An astute manager, he negotiated year after year favorable leases by repeatedly indicating that he would withdraw from management. The hotel did not have a restaurant until 1889, since he had a separate eating establishment. But in 1889 he sold that restaurant to the manager John H. Frerich’s, taking his old chef to the hotel to oversee the new kitchen and dining room. The upgrade of the Vonderbank hotel was marked by a feast on October 29, 1889:
In 1893 John Frerich absconded, $7,000 in debt to Vonderbank and owing more the the Brewer’s Association. Fortunately, Vonderbank had amassed substantial wealth. Throughout his career he maintained a fun-loving demeanor, joining in during any singing, mingling with conventioneers, and hoisting a stein with his countrymen. He loved managing Mardi Gras balls particularly and was expert at it. During the 1890s he retired from active management of the hotel, Joseph Schnetzer taking over control. Vonderbank became a world traveler. He died beloved by many in 1897.