Despite what you might have seen in the movie “Titanic,” the Astors, Widners, Guegenheims, and other super rich patrons did not go trudging down three flights of stairs to the first class dinning saloon. While the ten course “last meal” of April 14 was no doubt an extravagant feast – with Consomme Olga, Poached Salmon with Mousseline Sauce, Filet Mignon Lili, Chicken Lyonnaise, lamb, and roast duckling – the White Star Line had to meet the needs of an elite clientele whose tastes were even more rarified. These were patrons of such extraordinary status that they didn’t even want to rub elbows with the ordinary swells in first class.
The early years of the twentieth century witnessed a confluence of new trends as an unprecedented flood of immigrants headed to the U.S. The labor force that built America arrived on steamships, and a new generation of American millionaires proliferated with the profits. Competition between rival shipping lines intensified, and the great transatlantic liners became less like ships and more like ocean going hotels. At about the same time, Georges Auguste Escoffier was revolutionizing the restaurant business and creating the concept of the modern “celebrity chef.” His “Le Guide Culinaire,” published in 1903, formalized the preparation of sauces and dishes into the classic French cuisine we know today. Cesar Ritz, the next celebrity chef, adapted it for service in a new species of high-end restaurants and grand hotels.
In 1905, the legendary German shipping mogul Albert Ballin put a Ritz restaurant on his company’s newest liner, Amerika. Following White Star’s example, the Hamburg-America Line had also decided to quit the race for Atlantic speed records in favor of larger, more luxurious ships. If express liners were to be like floating grand hotels, he reasoned, then he would need to improve the food.
A Ritz restaurant became an instant hit with wealthy passengers on the German super liner Amerika, and a new requirement for the next generation of company flagships. Since White Star’s Olympic and Titanic were designed to compete with the crack German liners, they too had to start offering a Ritz.
Located on the second highest deck, behind the fourth stack, and only a few steps away from the two “millionaires suites,” Titanic’s a la carte restaurant was run as an independent concession by Luigi Gatti, the manager of two Ritz restaurants in London. No photos of Titanic’s Ritz exist, and those you might see in books are really those of her identical sister, Olympic. But when the Olympic went to the junk yard in 1935, someone had the good sense to rescue her French walnut paneling and gilt bronze fixtures, which reside today on the cruise ship Celebrity Millennium.
In contrast to the 532 seat First Class saloon, with its white painted paneling and linoleum floor, the Ritz on Titanic was fully carpeted with two toned Dubarry Rose. It had its own fine china specially commissioned by Royal Crown Derby, and a 160 piece silver service that was of far higher quality than anything else in first class.
No menus survived the sinking, but clues can be gleaned from a 1913 Olympic menu card and from the recollections of surviving passengers. Lady Duff Gordon remembered fresh strawberries, pink roses, white daisies, and hothouse grapes – in the middle of the North Atlantic in 1912 – while others recalled caviar, Egyptian quail, plover’s eggs, green turtle soup, prime rib, and a lobster dish.
The a la carte restaurant was open continuously from eight o’clock in the morning until eleven at night, and though extravagantly expensive, it remained solidly booked throughout the voyage. Gatti had complete control of the operation, and all of the employees were paid by him.
And there were a lot of employees; a list that would certainly give any modern accountant a heart attack. In addition to the waiters, there were roast cooks, assistant roast cooks, pastry cooks, fish cooks, soup cooks, icemen, barmen, glassmen, carvers, and even page boys to run errands. For a room with 49 tables that sat 137 people, there were no less than 68 employees. Only three survived the sinking.
Two female cashiers were put in lifeboats after the “women and children first” order. The only male survivor was Paul Mauge, the Maitre D, who owed his luck to a style of uniform that allowed him to blend in with the passengers.
Awakened by the collision, Mauge went up to the boat deck to see what had happened. On his way back down, he learned that his fellow employees had been confined to a room somewhere in second class and ordered, by someone, to stay there. And then came his chance. Looking out the window, Mauge saw lifeboat number five come creaking down from the deck above. He deliberated until the last minute, then jumped.
Though he broke both legs of the women he landed on, Paul Manage did manage to save his own life. The other 65 members of the Ritz staff were not so lucky, although they must have been released at some point before the end. A number of their bodies were recovered.
Today, in Southhampton, England, there is a bronze plaque affixed to a table leg in St. Joseph’s Church on Bugle street. In recent years, there have been at least three attempts to steal it. It is the only memorial for the men of Titanic’s a la carte Ritz Restaurant.
Sources: Sandy McLendon’s post on Encyclopedia Titanica, Brian J. Ticehurst’s research article in same, Eaton & Haas’s book “Titanic, Destination Disaster.”
Notes From Atlantis 