Musée de l’Art Culinaire

The Musée de l’Art Culinaire in Villeneuve-Loubet, France, confers a double favor on traveling food lovers: It’s in the Maritime Alps, which provides an excellent excuse to visit the Cote d’Azur; and its location in the childhood home of France’s greatest late19^th-and early 20^th-century chef, Escoffier, makes for an inviting, sometimes eccentric, low-key museum whose objects haven’t been catalogued or analyzed to death.

The house became a museum in 1956, some 110 years after Escoffier’s birth there. He grew up surrounded by the bounties of the region, including marvelous wines, produce, herbs, spices poultry, seafood and cheeses. His childhood interest in cooking led him to apprentice with an uncle in Nice, then work his way up through kitchens in Paris, Monte Carlo Lucerne and, finally, London.

In London, Escoffier became the head of the line at the Savoy Hotel in 1890, bringing with him ideas for kitchen organization and workflow that seemed revolutionary at the time. Before Escoffier, the various parts of the kitchen worked autonomously, cranking out salads, entrée, soups and desserts with no coordination. Escoffier imposed the concept of sous chefs working to time their dishes according to the order of the meal. He reinforced the need for cooperation by publishing the first menus to be laid out according to the sequence of appetizers, fish courses, meat courses, salads and desserts. He was also the first chef to offer diners a la carte menus.

He was also a reformer when it came to food itself. Escoffier hated the elaborate garnishes that accompanied many dishes of the Gilded Age. He began eliminating them and using sauces in their stead. All dishes were based on the freshest ingredients available, a practice that foreshadowed Americans’ late 20^th century preoccupation with freshness.

That isn’t to say that Escoffier was a premature Alice Waters. Many of his recipes are larded with fat and laden with sugar in amounts that would make most moderns wince. But in an era when people had little concern for cholesterol or knowledge of the contribution of sugar to diabetes, his recipes were hailed for their stunning depths of flavor and blending of elements.

Escoffier’s influence over French haut cuisine, further reinforced by his publication of three seminal works (Le Guide Culinaire, Le Livre des Menus and Ma Cuisine), lasted for decades. It wasn’t until the 1970s, with the arrival of cusine minceur, that the grand master’s influence began to wane. Even then, new chefs who were trying lighter styles of cooking used Escoffier’s recipes as a starting point for their dishes.

Before going to the Savoy, Escoffier had met Cesar Ritz, the man whose name later would epitomize the highest levels of hotel service and luxury. Both men, determined to reform what they saw as the stodgy practices of their professions, remained friends over the years. In 1898, when Ritz opened the Carlton Hotel in London, he invited Escoffier to become Chef de Cuisine. It was there that Escoffier began his 22-year reign as the pre-eminent chef of Europe.

The museum is almost Victorian in its inclusiveness, counting Escoffier family heirlooms, photos and furnishings along with its treasury of menus, recipes, place settings, cookware, utensils, letters, awards and food-related publications. One of the eight exhibit rooms is a reconstruction of a 19^th-century Provencal kitchen, the type where Escoffier first learned to cook.

The Musée de l'Art Culinaire, also referred to as the Musée Escoffier, is open during the summer, Tuesday through Sunday, 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.

By Patrick Totty