Louis Fauchère (Source: Commemorative biographical record of northeastern Pennsylvania. J.H. Beers & Co. 1900. Page 782.)
Life and Times
Louis Fauchère was a chef at Delmonico’s restaurant in New York in the mid-1800s.
Fauchère was born in 4 March 1823 in Verbey, Switzerland. His parents had 13 children. When he was 15, he began apprenticing as a cook at hotels in Switzerland. On 16 November 1846, at the age of 23, he married Rosalie Perrochet (born 2 July 1823), also 23. Their daughter, Marie Fauchère was born in Switzerland on 4 May 1848.
He came to America with his family in 1851, and began working at Delmonico’s Restaurant at 2 South William Street in New York under “chef de cuisine” Alessandro Filippini on 2 June of that same year.
In 1852, a relative of his wife’s, who had also come to America, opened a hotel called “The French Hotel” (aka “Van Gorden and La Bar”) on Broad Street in Milford, Pennsylvania.
In the summers, Fauchère would follow his rich customers to summer hotels such as the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga, New York, the Delavan House in Albany, New York, the Fort William Henry Hotel on Lake George, New York, and to his relative’s hotel in Milford.
Fauchère may have only worked at Delmonico’s for two years.
He signed his name, “Ls Fauchere.”
Louis Fauchère Signature
Hotel Fauchère
Hotel Fauchere, Mitford, Pennsylvania. Front. (© Beyond My Ken (2011) / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY 4.0)
In 1867, at the age of 44, Fauchère purchased a hotel in Milford, Pennsylvania from his wife’s relatives, and moved there in March of that year. He renamed it to “Hotel Fauchère.”
Despite his possibly short time at Delmonico’s, he remained friends with the family. A house near to the hotel became known as “Delmonico’s Cottage” because the family would stay there when they came to visit Fauchère.
In 1892, Fauchère transferred ownership of the hotel to his daughter Marie.
He died on 11 September 1893.
The hotel stayed in the Fauchère family until 1976, when it was converted to office space. In 2006, it was reopened as a hotel, after 5 years of restoration work by Dick Snyder and Sean Strub.
Some say that it was actually at Hotel Fauchère that Lobster Newberg was created. Most evidence points, however, to its being created at Delmonico’s in New York, with Fauchère making and popularizing it at his hotel in Milford.
Hotel Fauchere, Mitford, Pennsylvania. Side. (© Beyond My Ken (2011) / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY 4.0)
Web site: Hotel Fauchère (link valid as of March 2011)
Sources
Famous Fauchères. Milford Magazine. Milford, Pennsylvania: Pike Media Partners. June 2006. pp 32 to 35. Retrieved 21 May 2007 from http://www.milfordmagazine.com
Strub, Sean. The Louis Fauchère Legacy. Retrieved 21 May 2007 from http://www.hotelfauchere.com/legacy/fauchere/fauchere.php
Strub, Sean. Correspondence with, on file. May 2007.