When Mr D'Oyly Carte was putting in order the organisation of the newly opened Savoy Hotel, he, at Monte Carlo, asked M. Ritz, who was then at the Grand Hotel there, to come to London and take charge of the Savoy Restaurant. M. Ritz came and brought M. Escoffier with him to make history in the kitchens. When M. Ritz permanently took over the management of the hotel and the restaurant he asked M. Echenard, the proprietor of the Hotel du Louvre at Marseilles, to come to London and assist him in the restaurant. This triumvirate worked admirably together. M. Ritz, thin, nervous, splendidly neat, knowing all his patrons and their tastes, was a great _maître d'hôtel_ as well as a great manager. The saying which he constantly quoted, "The customer is always right," he acted up to. If some ignorant diner found fault with one of M. Escoffier's most exquisite creations it would be swept away without a word and something suited to a lower intelligence and an uncultivated palate substituted for it. If an old and valued customer had come into the restaurant and had ordered for dinner, tripe and onions and sausages and mashed potatoes, M. Ritz would have greeted such an order as though it were a flash of genius, and would probably have sent out to the nearest cab shelter for the dishes. During the early days of the Savoy M. Ritz was quietly teaching the English with money to spend that a good dinner is not of necessity a long dinner, and that a few dishes exquisitely cooked are better than a long catalogue of rich dishes. M. Echenard, looking like a Spanish hidalgo, quite understood the ways of his two great colleagues--for MM. Ritz and Escoffier are two of the greatest men in gastronomic history--and backed them up nobly. The cholera year in Marseilles took M. Echenard back to his hotel in the south, and he has prospered exceedingly there, being now the proprietor of the Reserve and the hotel just below it on the Corniche, as well as the Louvre. MM. Ritz and Escoffier have since made the fortunes of other London restaurants.