Dinner At Antoine’s

I thoroughly enjoyed J. M. Fenster’s article “The Taste of Time” (April 1997), but there were a couple of niggling errors I thought might be worth mentioning.

Pommes de terre soufflées has long been one of Antoine’s most famous and popular menu items, but it was not created there, as the article states. Antoine’s owner, Antoine Alciatore, said he got the recipe from a chef named Colînet, who was waiting for the arrival of King Louis-Philippe at the newly opened Saint-Gcrmain-en-Laye train station outside of Paris. The king’s delay forced Colînet to throw his already cooked potatoes back into the hot fat, and, voilà , they puffed up—the methodology of which was later perfected by an analytical chemist named Chevreul.

More important—especially if you ever want to get a reservation there—La Caravelle has for more than three decades been happily situated at 33 West Fifty-fifth Street, and is decidedly not on “New York’s East Side.”