Synopses & Reviews
"Ludwig Bemelmans was the original bad boy of the New York hotel/restaurant subculture," wrote Anthony Bourdain. Bemelmans also had a reporter's eye for sensory detail and a sharp wit, and his humorous autobiographical tales of behind-the-scenes kitchen life at the Ritz in 1920s and '30s New York never fail to amuse and engage. Hotel Bemelmans brilliantly evokes the kitchens, back passages, dining rooms, and banquet halls of Bemelmans's years at the Hotel Splendide--a thinly disguised stand-in for the Ritz. It's a strange, fabulous, and sometimes terrible universe populated by rogues, con men, geniuses, craftsmen, lunatics, gypsies, tramps, and thieves ... and it's all here in bitingly funny detail. Twenty-four of the tales are vintage Bemelmans, two have never before been published, and the lot is accompanied by seventy-three of Bemelmans's original, charming drawings.