Auguste de la Table is a character. The house is real.

Auguste de la Table never existed, and we never claim he did. He is assembled from two men who did. Adolphe Dugléré, chef of the Café Anglais, taciturn and exacting, forbade smoking until dinner was over, then walked from table to table lighting the cigars. Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, lawyer, judge and author of the Physiologie du goût, fled the Terror to New York in 1794 and played first violin at the theatre in the evenings. From Dugléré, De La Table takes the room. From Brillat-Savarin, the mind.

He is the host who remembers, and the host who thinks about why remembering matters. Brillat-Savarin wrote the sentence the house lives on: “To invite someone is to take charge of their happiness for as long as they are under your roof.” The book, the room, the regulars and the close of service are built to keep that promise without anyone being rushed.

We run a 70-cover restaurant in Bidart, on the Basque coast of France, on this book every night. One service, a set menu, the same team. Every page of the book is tested there, at the table, before it reaches yours. That is why the house is made in France.