Hôtel Ritz Paris

"... for Mr. Field, the 51-year-old head bartender at the Hemingway Bar at the Ritz hotel, it’s just another stop on a 27-month global journey — of wandering, reinvention, freelancing, passing the time — while the famed Ritz is renovated. ... The Ritz set the gold standard for hotel living when it first opened in an 18th-century residence on the in 1898. All that is landmarked will stay the same: the sculptures, marble staircases, the building facade, the bas-reliefs and wood paneling in the Imperial suite, and the ceiling and 18th-century marquetry floors of the Chopin suite. Of course, the wood-paneled, leather-armchaired Hemingway Bar (the reincarnation of Le Petit Bar) will not be disturbed. , , , , , , , , and (as well as , of course) all drank there. The royal highball and the seapea cocktail were invented there."

"knew bette than anyone the importance of the kitchen in creating a truly luxurious hotel experience. He had built his success in the hotel business in tandem with the brilliant chef Auguste Escoffier. At the Grand Hotel in Monte Carlo and the in , where they had both worked for years, Escoffier had dazzled guest with his cooking, inventing new dishes and finding new ways of presenting classics."

"The Ritz is the highest-priced hotel in Paris. Nine dollars for a single room is the minimum here, all is elegant, chic, gay and sophisticated. The Ritz clientele is cosmopolitan to the nth degree. Diplomats, English nobility, financiers, smart women of society, buyers and actresses of the stage and screen make their reservations months in advance for the spring season. To get good accommodations, at this time of the year, you must be known to the management. If you are known, it doesnt matter about your pedigree or even bank account. Chorus girls with a certain popularity and indigent but well-known journalists are treated with more respect by the staff than wealthy but unknown tourists."

"Like many upscale establishments of the period, the Ritz maintained a separate bar for women who were unaccompanied by men."

"Since it became fashionable to boast a Paris divorce, the Ritz ladies room has been headquarters for the Alimony Sisterhood, who meet there and compare notes about past and future husbands, lawyers fees, their dearest friends and the increasing popularity of pearl necklaces. Some of the veteran alimony leaguers seem perpetually in a state of expectancy—of divorces or new husbands. There are ladies making the Ritz bar a nightly ceremony who are at their fourth husband and who wont admit to thirty years of age."