Saying Goodbye to the Prototype for Celebrity Chefs

André Soltner, the influential French chef who died at 92 in January, was remembered warmly by family and friends for his frugal habits, though a memorial to celebrate him on Saturday afternoon in Manhattan was anything but.

A 16-piece orchestra perched above the cathedral-size ballroom at 583 Park Avenue welcomed guests to their gilt chairs with strains of Handel and Bach filling the air, a rampart of yellow and apricot flowers lining the stage. Beneath a massive crystal chandelier, a sea of chef’s whites assembled to honor the man behind the famed restaurant Lutèce, who many in the room considered a hero, if not a close mentor.

Among the speakers at the memorial service were Mr. Soltner’s fellow celebrity chefs Thomas Keller, left, and Daniel Boulud.Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York Times

Daniel Boulud, who is Mr. Soltner’s fellow Frenchman and the chef of the Michelin-starred restaurant Daniel, sat next to Thomas Keller, of Per Se and the French Laundry. Danny Meyer, the restaurateur behind Gramercy Tavern and Shake Shack, sat in a row just behind them, with the celebrity chef Tom Colicchio nearby. Jacques Pépin, at 89 one of Mr. Soltner’s few contemporaries present, donned his chef’s uniform for the afternoon.

The concentration of culinary star power should have required a designated survivor.

“Lutèce was not a fancy restaurant,” Mr. Boulud said affectionately, recalling the restaurant in a cozy townhouse on East 50th Street that Mr. Soltner helped make into a destination for French cuisine from its opening in 1961 to its shuttering in 2004. “You walked in and there was that little bistro feeling in the front, and it felt like a home.”

Mr. Soltner began as head chef at the restaurant, eventually buying out his partner, Andre Surmain, in 1973. He was a constant presence until he sold it to Ark Restaurants in 1994, whereupon he became a dean at the French Culinary Institute in Manhattan.