Life à la Henri: Being the Memories of Henri Charpentier

HENRI CHARPENTIER (1900-1961) was a French chef who created the Crêpes Suzette, opened the original Henri Restaurant in 1906, and counted Queen Victoria, Marilyn Monroe, King Edward VII, Sarah Bernhardt and J.P. Morgan among his friends and patrons.

Born on Christmas Day in 1900, Charpentier immigrated to the U.S. from France in the early 1900s. After studying with chefs Escoffier, Jean Camous, and Cesar Ritz, and working at nine of the most famous restaurants in Europe—Hotel de Paris, Monte Carlo; Maxims, Paris; Tour d'Argent, Paris; Café Royale, London; Savoy, London; Metropole, Moscow; Vier Jahresszeiten, Munich; Quirinale, Rome; and Belle Meuniere, Rome—Charpentier opened his own restaurant on Long Island in 1906. Over the next three decades he opened more U.S. restaurants and in the process served kings, presidents, moguls, and movie stars.

In 1934 he published his memoirs, Life á la Henri; Being the Memoirs of Henri Charpentier, co-authored with Boyden Sparkes, which served up Charpentier's life story, together with celebrity anecdotes and actual recipes.

Charpentier died in Renondo Beach, California in 1961.

BOYDEN RANDOLPH SPARKES (1890-1954) was a former war correspondent for the New York Tribune. He was also the author of several books on “business celebrities,” including Walter Chrysler’s autobiography Life of an American Workman as Walter Chrysler, as told to Sparkes, which was serialized in the Post in 1937, and a biography of the “Witch of Wall Street,” Hetty Green, published in 1930. He also contributed first-person accounts to publications such as the Saturday Evening Post, including White Sox star Eddie Collins’ “From Player to Pilot.” Born on January 6, 1890 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Sparkes was married to Bessie Ledford Gore (1882-1959) and had two daughters, Bessie (1915-2008) and Dorothy (1918-1997). He died in Wilson, North Carolina on May 18, 1954.