A hundred years ago to this day, on December
8, 1917, a remarkable restaurateur died in New York City - unnoticed by the
public: Alessandro Filippini (or Alexander Filippini, in the anglicized form),
one of the most influential chefs in the famous Delmonico's restaurants. Like
the Delmonico brothers themselves, he was an emigrant from the Ticino in
Switzerland who settled in the New World in the second half of the 19th Century
and left his footprints there.
Filippini's biography remained elusive until now.
We knew about his cook books, but on a personal level not even basic personal
information was available, and books on food history and related websites
contain mostly erroneous dates.
Extensive research in archives and in the New York Public Library enabled
me however to sketch out a fascinating biography:
Alessandro Filippini was born on New Year's
Eve of 1849 in the little village of Airolo in the Canton of Ticino in the
Italian speaking southern part of Switzerland - merely 10 miles north of Mairengo,
the village where the Delmonicos came from. Hardly in his teens, he was sent to
one of the famous cooking schools in Lyon, France, as an apprentice. He was so
talented that the school hired him as a teacher while still in training - which
allowed him to pay for the school. After first professional experiences in
Germany and Switzerland, he arrived in New York City on board of the steamer
'Ville de Paris' on June 5, 1866. He immediately found employment at
Delmonico’s 14th street restaurant
and served under the regiment of Charles
Ranhofer, the French chef who was in charge of the Delmonico kitchens since
1862.
At Delmonico’s for only two months, the young
cook already learned what it meant to be in the kitchen of the city’s most
famous restaurant: President Andrew Johnson was visiting New York, and of
course it was at Delmonico’s that the citizens of the city hosted the dinner in
his honor on August 29, 1866. It was „the finest dinner with which I ever had
anything to do”, Filippini much later told a journalist.
In 1885, just after the death of the great
Charles Delmonico (who was succeeded by Charles C. Delmonico), Filippini began
collecting and writing down the recipes used in the Delmonico kitchens, and
after five year’s work he published it in book form as “The Table”, or “The
Delmonico Cook Book” (1889). Not only did Filippini give a bill of fare for the
three meals of each day of the year, with the corresponding recipes, but also
extensive advice about the seasonality of all kinds of foods and about how to
set a table and how to serve the food.
From the restaurant at 14th Street, Filippini
went on to their Broad Street Restaurant (until 1883), then to their Pine
Street Restaurant, and when that closed in 1889 he moved to the new Delmonico’s
restaurant at 341 Broadway. He soon
became one of the pillars of the Delmonico empire. As a journalist of the New
York Tribune noted in 1891, Filippini "has been at one and at all times
the manager, the buyer and the inventor of toothsome dishes. Every morning for
twenty-five years he arose in time to visit the markets by 3 o’clock, where he
purchased the daily supplies for all of the Delmonico restaurants, uptown and
downtown. No man ever knew better than he the value of food products, and none
could buy so well for his employer. Every day he visited the various
restaurants, studied their needs, made suggestions and improvements in the
service, and kept everything running with perfect smoothness. Not an hour of
the day was he ever idle, and his black hair has become silver-streaked in his
long service."
When in 1890 Charles Delmonico decided to
close the restaurant at 341 Broadway, Filippini regarded this as an opportunity
and opened a restaurant of his own – Filippini’s – just a block away, at 337
Broadway. Filippini told the press that he “intended to keep only the best
food, wines and other beverages”. The New York Tribune, in view of the opening
of Filippini’s, anticipated that “the restaurant, which will be run on the same
plan as Delmonico’s, is destined to have many patrons.”Alas, it did not, and in
May 1893, Filippini had to close Filippini’s Restaurant and make an assignment
of his property for the benefit of creditors. During the short life of his
restaurant, the chef and owner however found time to put out three more
cookbooks: “One Hundred Ways of Cooking Eggs” (1892), “One Hundred Ways of
Cooking Fish” (1892) and “One Hundred Desserts” (1893).
He may actually have been out of work for some
years until around 1898 when he entered into the services of the International
Navigation Company (later renamed International Mercantile Marine). His new
employer was the large conglomerate, backed financially by the banker J. P.
Morgan, that owned and operated at one point 188 ships, including the American
Line, the Red Star Line, the White Star Line and half of Holland America. He
became the “travelling inspector of the American liners”, called in to systematize
steamship cooking on a new basis. He reportedly got on board a ship without
previous arrangement, not being expected, and watched the preparation and
serving of meals, showed the cooks and bakers essential details, and also made
sure that the table stewards were in good training. Moreover, he also oversaw
the composition of the menus served on board, evidently his core competence.
Armed with a letter of introduction to United
States consuls in all parts of the world, obtained from Secretary Hay at the
instance of Senator Chauncey Depew, in 1902 Filippini went on a trip around the
world, starting in Honolulu in January and ending in Paris in September of that
year. He travelled through Japan, China and Hong Kong, the Philippines,
Singapore, India, Egypt, Greece, Turkey, Romania, Hungary, Austria, Germany,
Belgium and his old country, Switzerland. By visiting innumerable hotels,
restaurants and private homes, he gathered over 3,300 recipes that he arranged
to form suggestions (as in “The Table”) for “complete menus of the three meals
for every day in the year” and published them as “The International Cook Book”
(1906).
Very little is known about his private life.
Filippini lived most his life in New York City, for the better part with two
sisters and a brother, who also emigrated from Switzerland. The busy life at
Delmonico’s and then the long periods on board of the ships seem to have
prevented him from marrying, but quite late in life he met Julia Martinoli, a
Swiss widow seventeen years the younger, who became his companion, and in 1898
their daughter, Alice Filippini, was born. Alessandro Filippini died on
December 8, 1917 in New York City, at age 67. Neither a report nor an obituary
was published in any of the newspapers. Adamant New York had already forgotten
about him.