Hotel Bemelmans

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Ludwig Bemelmans was the original bad boy of the New York hotel/restaurant subculture" writes Anthony Bourdain, and with his reporter's eye for sensory detail and his keen wit, Bemelmans' humorous autobiographical tales of behind the scenes kitchen life at the Ritz in 1920s and 30s New York never fail to amuse and engage.

Proabaly Bemelmans' best work—and certainly his most famous essays—Hotel Bemelmans brilliantly evokes the kitchens, back passages, dining rooms, and banquet halls of Bemelmans' 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 73 of Bemelmans' original, charming drawings.

FROM THE CRITICS

Jonathan Yardley

Between 1938 and 1942 Bemelmans published four books about his life in hotels and restaurants -- Life Class, Small Beer, Hotel Splendide and I Love You, I Love You, I Love You -- all of which have been out of print for ages. Hotel Bemelmans is a greatest-hits selection of two dozen reminiscences culled from those books and previously uncollected material as well as a generous sample of his charming drawings … the best parts of the book are those in which Bemelmans writes about Mespoulets and the other mostly anonymous service people who are a lot more interesting than the Society they serve.— The Washington Post r

Paul Levy - The New York Times

In this elegantly illustrated new edition of Hotel Bemelmans, Bemelmans tells witty tales of a young Austrian immigrant's working life in the Hotel Splendide in Manhattan, a thinly disguised Ritz-Carlton.

Library Journal