César Ritz

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R.I.P
César

César Ritz (French: [sezaʁ ʁits]; né Cäsar Ritz; 23 February 1850 – 26 October 1918) was a Swiss businessman, hotelier and pioneer of the travel industry. He most notably founded several hotels most famously the Hôtel Ritz in Paris and the Ritz and Carlton Hotels in London (the forerunners of the modern Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company). He was an early hotel chain founder known as "King of Hoteliers, and Hotelier to Kings," and it is from his name and that of his hotels that the term ritzy derives.

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César

Early life and education Ritz was born 23 February 1850 in Niederwald in Valais, Switzerland, the youngest of thirteen children, to Johann "Anton" Ritz, a farmer, municipal president and justice of the peace, and Maria Creszentia (née Heinen), into a Catholic peasant family. At the age of twelve he was sent as a boarder to the Jesuit college at Sion, and at fifteen, having shown only vaguely artistic leanings, was apprenticed as a sommelier at a hotel in Brig. While working there as an apprentice wine waiter he was dismissed by the patron of the hotel from his position, saying, "You'll never make anything of yourself in the hotel business. It takes a special knack, a special flair, and it's only right that I tell you the truth—you haven't got it." He returned briefly to the Jesuits as a sacristan, then left to seek his fortune in Paris at the time of the 1867 Universal Exhibition.

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In 1878, he became the manager of the Grand Hôtel National in Lucerne and held the same position, in parallel, at the Grand Hôtel in Monaco until 1888. A pioneer in the development and management of luxury hotels, he knew how to entice wealthy customers and quickly gained a reputation for good taste and elegance, and by the mid-1880s the Grand Hôtel National in Lucerne had earned a reputation as the most elegant hotel in Europe. Ritz was the first to mandate that "the customer is always right". His code was "See all without looking; hear all without listening; be attentive without being servile; anticipate without being presumptuous. If a diner complains about a dish or the wine, immediately remove it and replace it, no questions asked." According to his widow, Ritz also was a pioneer of hygiene and cleanliness in his hotels. He decorated without heavy draperies and wallpaper and replaced them with washable paint and lighter washable fabrics. In 1887 Ritz bought the Hôtel de Provence in Cannes and the Restaurant de la Conversation and Minerva Hotel in Baden-Baden.

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Ritz and Escoffier In 1888, he opened the Conservations Haus restaurant with Auguste Escoffier as chef in Baden-Baden, and the two were then invited to London by Richard D'Oyly Carte to become the first manager and chef of the Savoy Hotel, positions they held from 1889 until 1897. Ritz put together what he described as "a little army of hotel men for the conquest of London". The Savoy under Ritz was an immediate success, attracting a distinguished and moneyed clientele headed by the Prince of Wales, including the British and European royal families. According to Montgomery-Massingberd and Watkin, "the outstanding success of the Savoy owed everything to the civilized genius of César Ritz and his brilliant chef, Auguste Escoffier, who introduced the English to the subtlety and delicacy of French haute cuisine and invented at the Savoy many celebrated dishes, including Pêche Melba and the thin toast named after the same singer". Aristocratic women, hitherto unaccustomed to dine in public, were now "seen in full regalia in the Savoy dining and supper rooms." Ritz campaigned with Henry Labouchère, Lord Randolph Churchill, and others to "alter licensing laws whereby restaurants could not open on Sundays and had to close at 11pm…Citește mai mult

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Later life The hotelier himself withdrew progressively from the affairs of his various companies, selling his interests in hotels at Frankfurt and Salsomaggiore in 1905 and retiring from the Ritz Hotel Development Company in 1907, from the Carlton Hotel Company in 1908, and from the Paris Ritz Company in 1911. By 1912, according to Marie-Louise Ritz, to all intents and purposes his life had finished. In 1913, he was placed in a private hospital at Lausanne, and the following year he was moved to another on Lake Küssnacht in Canton Schwyz. He died at Küssnacht on 26 October 1918. Although from a humble Swiss background, César Ritz and his luxurious hotels became legendary, and his name entered the English language as an epitome of high-class cuisine and accommodation. He is buried in the village of his birth.

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Ritz hotels Ritz would go on to find investors and open a number of his own hotels. By the late 1890s, Ritz was an extremely busy man, with hotel enterprises in Rome, Frankfurt, Salsomaggiore, Palermo, Biarritz, Wiesbaden, Monte Carlo, Lucerne and Menton and projects in Madrid, Cairo and Johannesburg. According to his wife, "César's suitcases were never completely unpacked; he was always either just arriving from or departing upon a new journey". In 1896, he formed the Ritz Hotel syndicate with South African millionaire Alfred Beit, reputedly the wealthiest man in the world at the time. They opened what would become the celebrated Hôtel Ritz in the Place Vendôme, Paris, late in 1898. At the inauguration, on 1 June 1898, were many figures of the European elite, including Lady de Grey, the Duke and Duchess de Rohan, Calouste Gulbenkian, and Marcel Proust. He went on to open The Ritz Hotel in London in 1906, which became one of the most popular meeting places of the era for the rich and famous. The Ritz Hotel in Madrid opened in 1910, inspired by King Alfonso XIII's desire to build a luxury hotel to rival the Ritz in Paris. Ritz enjoyed a long…Citește mai mult

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Early career Ritz's formative five years in Paris, including the siege of 1870–71 during the Franco-Prussian War, gave him sufficient polish and confidence to transform himself from a waiter and general factotum into a maître d'hôtel, manager, and eventually hotelier. After a short stint working at the Hôtel de la Fidélité, he worked as a waiter in a workman's bistro and took a position in a prix fixe restaurant owned by the Chevallier family, where he was later dismissed for breaking too many dishes in his desire to work briskly. He worked his way up from assistant waiter to restaurant manager of a restaurant on the corner of Rue Royale and Rue Saint-Honoré, before working at the high-class Restaurant Voisin between 1869 and 1872. Here he waited on the likes of Sarah Bernhardt, George Sand, Edmond de Goncourt, Théophile Gautier, and Alexandre Dumas, learned the essentials of his trade from the owner, Bellenger, and served up dishes such as elephant's trunk in sauce chasseur as supplies of fresh meat dwindled during the siege and zoo animals took their place. In 1872, Ritz became floor waiter of the Hôtel Splendide in Paris, which was one of the most lavish hotels in…Citește mai mult

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Bibliography Allen, Brigid. "Ritz, César". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/48534. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.) Ashburner, F. "Escoffier, Georges Auguste". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/50441. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.) Barr, Luke (2018). Ritz and Escoffier: The Hotelier, the Chef, and the Rise of the Leisure Class. New York: Clarkson Potter. ISBN 978-0-8041-8629-2. Hotchner, A. E. (July 2012). "As the Paris Ritz Shutters, Remembering Its Mysteries, Misbehaviors, and Unhurried Luxuries | Society". Vanity Fair. Archived from the original on 26 November 2013. Retrieved 18 November 2013. James, Kenneth (2002). Escoffier: The King of Chefs. London and New York: Hambledon and London. ISBN 978-1-85285-396-9. Montgomery-Massingberd, Hugh; Watkin, David (1980). The London Ritz: a social and architectural history. Aurum. ISBN 978-0-906053-01-0. Ritz, une histoire plus belle que la légende - Claude Roulet - Éditions Quai Voltaire - 1998 ISBN 2-912517-04-4 Ritz, The King of Hoteliers and Host of Kings, Film by Frank Garbely, r-film Zurich 2007, ISAN 0000-0000-62E8-0000-U-0000-0000-L Ritz, Marie Louise (1938). Cesar Ritz: Host to the World (1st ed.). Philadelphia: Lippincott.

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First managership In the winter of 1873 his career in hotel management began when he undertook the direction of the restaurant at the Grand Hôtel in Nice. He once stated that his "years of wandering in the wake of a migratory society had begun". While working as manager at the Rigi Kulm Hotel in Switzerland, an incident occurred that changed his career. The central heating at the hotel broke during a frigid day, and a group of 40 were arriving for lunch. Ritz changed the menu to hot dishes, moved a table into the smaller drawing room, and heated 40 bricks in the oven to be wrapped in flannel cloths placed at the footstool of each guest. This quick thinking was noticed by Max Pfyffer, the designer of the Grand Hotel National in Lucerne, who noted his efficiency in a scrapbook. Regular moves then followed, usually twice a year just ahead of the migration of the international tourist set from the hotels of Nice or San Remo in winter to Swiss mountain resorts such as Rigi-Kulm and Lucerne in summer. He had a period working as the maître d'hôtel of the Grand Hôtel in Locarno on Lake Maggiore, a difficult…Citește mai mult