Marcel Boulestin

Xavier Marcel Boulestin (1878 – 20 September 1943) was a French chef, restaurateur, and the author of cookery books that popularised French cuisine in the English-speaking world.

Born in Poitiers in France (Poitou region), Boulestin tried a number of occupations before finding his role as a restaurateur. He worked as secretary and ghostwriter to the author "Willy" (Henry Gauthier-Villars) in Paris, and then moved to London, where he made his home and career from 1906 onward. There, he opened an interior design shop, which failed to make enough money. He wrote extensively, and was commissioned to write a simple French cookery book for English readers. It was a huge success, and thereafter his career was in cooking.

The Restaurant Boulestin, known as the most expensive in London, opened in 1927. Its fame, and the long series of books and articles that Boulestin wrote, made him a celebrity. His cuisine was wide-ranging, embracing not only the French classics but also dishes familiar to British cooks.

Among those influenced by Boulestin was the English cookery expert Elizabeth David, who praised Boulestin in her writings, and adopted many of his precepts.

Born in Poitiers, Périgord, France, Boulestin was raised by his mother and his maternal grandmother in Poitiers. His parents lived apart, and the young Boulestin spent a month each summer with his father in Saint-Aulaye. He was educated in Poitiers, and later in Bordeaux, where he was nominally a law student, but in practice was a full-time concert-goer and member of the musical scene of the city. He wrote "Letter from Bordeaux" for Courrier Musical, a musical review, and published his first book, a dialogue, Le Pacte, for which the humorous writer Willy (Henry Gauthier-Villars), husband of the novelist Colette, wrote a preface. Despite Willy's endorsement, the book was not a success.

After compulsory military service in 1899, Boulestin moved to Paris and worked for Willy as a secretary and as one of the several ghostwriters he employed for his sensational and well-selling books, among them Curnonsky and Colette. Willy's stories and novels often included characters taken from his friends and collaborators. His Claudine and Minne series and other novels sketched Colette's youth, peppered with characters taken from other spheres, like the clearly homosexual "Hicksem" and "Blackspot", both taken from Boulestin's personality. Willy's novel En Bombe (1904) portrayed his life with Boulestin and his other secretaries, illustrated with 100 posed photos showing Willy himself as Maugis, Marcel Boulestin as Blackspot, another secretary Armory as Kernadeck, Colette as Marcelle, Marcelle as Jeannine, and Colette's dog Toby-Chien. Also, in 1905, Boulestin's French translation of The Happy Hypocrite by Max Beerbohm was published in the Mercure de France, with a caricature of Boulestin by Beerbohm. Boulestin had to convince a sceptical editor that Beerbohm really existed and was not an invention of Boulestin's. He also acted on occasion, alongside Colette, in several plays written by Willy.

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