Word: surmain
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...explains why he and the Roux brothers chose Santa Barbara. "This is a cosmopolitan town and is a getaway for the very rich. People demand a high quality of life, and so it's perfect for a first-quality restaurant." Lower overhead and less competition are also factors. Andre Surmain, the founder of New York's Lutece but now known for his Relais a Mougins in the south of France, opened a branch last winter in Palm Beach, Fla. He is encouraged enough to have what he calls "other tricks up my toque...
...sleep to noon with exhaustion. In France % there are the same hours but not the same pressures. In America you have to be on edge every day. When you are good, they will love you. But make one mistake and they will kill you." Agrees Surmain: "Americans squeeze you like a lemon, and when there is no more juice left, they just drop you." He advises also that it is important to have a good command of English, to appear well on TV talk shows...
This was hardly the tone and style of the Lutece unveiled by Andre Surmain, the original owner and creator 25 years ago. It was then the city's most lavishly decorated and expensive restaurant, with a price-fixed lunch at $6.50 and a la carte main courses at $8.25 that evoked gasps from customers. Nor was its success instantaneous. In a review written one month after Lutece opened, Craig Claiborne, then the restaurant critic for the New York Times, allowed that two dishes -- foie gras baked in a brioche loaf and roast veal stuffed with truffled kidneys -- were superb...
...owner of the well-established Le Relais a Mougins in the south of France, and a clone of the same name newly opened this winter in Palm Beach, Fla., Surmain, 65, recalls early triumphs and failures: "I wanted not a restaurant, but the restaurant. And to become famous, it had to have a short name without the word restaurant in it," he says, explaining that he finally chose Lutece from the ancient name for Paris, Lutetia. When he was making his | plans he heard of Soltner, then the chef at Chez Hansi, an Alsatian brasserie in Paris. Surmain went over...
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