Hotel Splendide

“Truly a great book—unique, invaluable and unapproachable as the gold standard of the genre… Bemelmans got there first, more frequently, and better.” —Anthony Bourdain
 
Acerbic, colorful, and spirited stories from a bygone era: behind the scenes in a grand NY hotel, from the author of the Madeline books

Picture David Sedaris writing Kitchen Confidential about the Ritz in New York in the 1920s, which had the style and charm of The Grand Budapest Hotel…

In this charming and uproariously funny hotel memoir, Ludwig Bemelmans uncovers the fabulous world of the Hotel Splendide—the thinly disguised stand-in for the Ritz—a luxury New York hotel where he worked as a waiter in the 1920s. With equal parts affection and barbed wit, he uncovers the everyday chaos that reigns behind the smooth facades of the gilded dining room and banquet halls.

In hilarious detail, Bemelmans sketches the hierarchy of hotel life and its strange and fascinating inhabitants: from the ruthlessly authoritarian maître d'hôtel Monsieur Victor to the kindly waiter Mespoulets to Frizl the homesick busboy. Illustrated with his own charming line drawings, Bemelmans' tales of a bygone era of extravagance are as charming as they are riotously entertaining.
 
“[Bemelmans] was the original bad boy of the NY hotel/restaurant subculture, a waiter, busboy, and restaurateur who “told all” in a series of funny and true (or very near true) autobiographical accounts of backstairs folly, excess, borderline criminality, and madness in the grande Hotel Splendide… If you like stories about old New York as I do, this classic will have you laughing out loud.”  –Anthony Bourdain

Ludwig Bemelmans (1898-1962) was an Austrian-born American writer and illustrator of books for children and adults. He travelled to American in 1914, at the age of sixteen, and worked for three years in the dining halls of what he called, in his autobiographical works, the Hotel Splendide. In 1926, he quit working in hotels to become a full-time cartoonist and made frequent contributions to the New Yorker, Vogue and Town and Country. He is perhaps most well-known as the author of the beloved Madeline books.

CONTENTS
1.    The Animal Waiter                               7
2.    Art at the Hotel Splendide                 14
3.    The   Lost Mandolin                              23
4.   Easy Money                                        35
5.    Kalakobe                                              43
6.    A Night in Granada                             51
7.    The Hispano                                        56
8.    The Homesick Bus Boy                       62
9.    The New Suit                                        70
10.    The Ballet Visits the Magician          82
11.    The Magician Does a New Trick           89
12.    The Dreams of the Magician                96
13.   My Valet Lustgarten                          105
14.    The Banquet                                       116
15.    The   Murderer of the Splendide         129