Willy O. Rossel

Willy Otto Rossel (April 4, 1921 – September 14, 2015) was a Chef de Cuisine or Executive Chef most noted for his extensive work in the preparation of gourmet airline cuisine. In 1965, he was hired by the progressive Dallas-based Braniff Airways, Inc., to administer the airline's commitment to providing its passengers with the finest food aloft. Also in 1965, Braniff had begun implementing its revolutionary End of the Plain Plane Campaign, which called for an unprecedented change in the way the airline presented itself to the public. This campaign not only included a change in the company's look but an upgrade of its inflight cuisine to gourmet status. Rossel wrote the first manual used for the apprenticeship of American chefs.

Willy Rossel was born in Tramelan, Switzerland, and had descended from a famous poet who was a statesman named Virgil Rossel. Rossel was one of five brothers and his father, Otto Rossel, was well known watchmaker and collector of pocket watches.

His family had traditionally been watchmakers in Switzerland but Rossel left his family home in Tramelan at the age of 16 to pursue his love for cooking. As a young boy, Rossel remembered going on camping trips with his friends in the woods of Switzerland, where he cooked baked potatoes and spaghetti. At the age of five or six, he would go into the woods to pick mushrooms and berries for cooking. In his teens, he bicycled to cook at a small restaurant in Vien, Switzerland, which was his first job as a cook. During World War II, Rossel served as a Private in the Swiss Army and as a cook.

He received his initial culinary arts training in Zurich, followed by London, Paris, Rome and Venice. He learned cooking from a small book. Each chef he cooked with inscribed the book and then recommend him to the next chef or job as an apprentice cook. This was how he trained as a chef, which was common in Europe.

Early career endeavors found Rossel as Sous Chef at the famed Savoy Hotel in London, the Excelsior in Florence, Italy, and the Hôtel Ritz Paris. He served as Executive Chef at Tower Isle Hotel in Jamaica, and the Caribe Hilton Hotel in Puerto Rico. Chef Rossel moved to the United States in 1952, and assumed the position of Sous Chef and then Executive Chef at the New Yorker Restaurant and finally The Roosevelt Hotel (Manhattan) in New York City and then Executive Chef at the prestigious Hampshire House, Beacon Hill, Boston.

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