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Father was born in the parish of St. Roche, Québec in the 1920s. My grandparents Romeo Gendron and Alice L’Heureux Gendron were distant cousins and from old families in Québec going back to the 1600s. Grandmaman Alice had nine children, Father being the second eldest after his sister Alice. Growing up, Father and his family lived near the railroad tracks in Québec City. Grandmaman took in boarders. Father learned to cook at an early age and helped feed the family and the boarders he told me. He left home as a young teenager and found a job as a line cook in the military barracks in Québec City during WWII; he was too young to enlist.

After WWII ended, Father and his two brothers, Henri and Gaston, crossed the border from Canada into the United States looking for work. They found work in French restaurants in Manhattan, NYC, as they spoke French; they did not have documentation or visas.

Father opened his own small corner restaurant off Times Square after working his way up the ladder in a French restaurant as a dishwasher, line cook, and waiter. Father’s restaurant consisted of an open window with a counter looking out from the small kitchen to the street. There was room for only one person in the kitchen; plates were handed out onto the counter through the window opening. Customers sat on three stools in front of the counter, protected from the elements by an awning attached to the building. After closing time, the awning was rolled up, the window shuttered.

Father shopped for pots, pans, silverware, plates and furniture for the 

restaurant at the Salvation Army on 46th Street and 8th Avenue. Throughout the years he had restaurants, he furnished them by shopping at thrift shops. He supplemented his purchases by “borrowing” plates, flatware, glasses, and tablecloths from friends and customers, regrettably losing track of these items.

Having received great reviews at his first restaurant, he opened a restaurant on 46th Street and 7th Avenue which had an apartment above the restaurant. After a year he moved the restaurant to 50 West 55th Street, which he had from the 1950s into the 1960s before leaving New York City. Uncle Henri and Uncle Gaston worked at the restaurants on 46th Street and 55th Street for a time.

Father spun an unbelievable and fabricated story that he was from Paris, France and insisted that his brothers and family, including Mother, go along with this story. We were never to disclose the fact that we were from Québec, Canada, and had never travelled outside of North America. Mother, a New Yorker, went along with this story to please Father saying that it was, “harmless embroidery.” Restaurant patrons from France clearly detected the Québecois accent when Father spoke, but Father insisted on creating a fictitious past that would match his ideal reality. “Why?” I asked.

There was anti-French Canadian and anti-Catholic sentiment in New England and in New York City during the 1880 to 1900s. French Canadian immigration into New England was a national news story. Harpers and the New York Times wrote sensational articles about it. Some of the press insulted French Canadians and stirred up prejudice against them.

In 1924, the “Immigration Act” put quotas on economic immigrants from French Canada; they were Catholic and “mixed race” (Metis - mixed indigenous /First Nations and French). Father wanted to conceal his identity and showcase his restaurant as being Parisian, but this took a toll on my family. Uncle Henri quit the restaurant and told Father in French: “I am just a fucking waiter from Québec, and I am not ashamed of it!” Father was ashamed of his heritage.

Years later in Las Vegas, Nevada, Father’s friend Gerry asked me, “When did you and your grandmother immigrate from France?” I told him that I had never been to France, and neither had my grandmother. Father had been listening in and immediately jumped into the conversation and said that I did not understand English well, that I did not know what I was talking about. As Sir Walter Scott said, “Oh what a wicked web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”

The biggest whopper my father told is related in the following passage from a newspaper restaurant review in New York City:

“Pierre started cooking at his mother’s Paris pension at the age of nine, and now claims he knows 5,000 recipes and 167 sauces. Jean-Pierre started his restaurant in a tiny store on Times Square, mostly with borrowed fittings. He took up cooking with a blow torch during an emergency in which the electric stove conked out. Word got around that several struggling young actresses, one of them Grace Kelly, liked to eat there, and the place was made. Lucky Pierre got his nickname during WWII, when he was a Free French fighter, following a Nazi bombing of a truck convoy. Pierre and a pal sat out the raid under one of the trucks, fortified with a bottle of brandy, and did not know until afterward that the truck was carrying ammunition. Following the war, he came to the United States in the entourage of the late Marcel Cerdan, for whom he acted as a sparring partner.”

A variation of this story seen in the press is that he was driving an ambulance in Normandy France on D-Day when he and other soldiers spotted a cow and used a blow torch to make beef steaks.

About cooking with the blow torch, the following was related to me from my Uncle Henri. Father was a gambler and did not pay his bills on time, or often. At his restaurant on 55th Street, after he had not paid his electric or gas bills for several months, both the electricity and gas were disconnected. He rigged something up to route the electricity from a nearby restaurant across the alley to “Lucky Pierre’s” restaurant, that is until the electric bill, which had doubled, was so high that the other restaurant had the electric company investigate and “pull the plug.”

Without electricity in the restaurant Father and Uncle Henri went to a hardware store and purchased a blow torch (a professional blow torch used for soldering versus a handheld butane torch for crème brulee) and a tank of propane gas. They also bought all the candles in the hardware store and some storm lanterns. They assembled the blow torch and tank in the dining area of the restaurant then lit candles on all the dining tables and above the bar area.

The first night cooking with the blowtorch was an immense success. Word spread that there was a crazy chef from France cooking with a blow torch. The Press came by to see what was going on; the Fire Department heard about the blow torch cooking and inspected the blow torch set up. To meet Fire Department regulations, Father built a framed glass cage in the dining room so that sparks would not set the restaurant on fire. Wherever Father moved to and opened a restaurant, the Fire Department was sure to show up. 

From another newspaper article:

“The restaurant, initially located at 46th Street and 7th Ave, became an instant success. Celebrities, food connoisseurs, and spectators were enthralled by his famous ‘magic torch’ cuisine. Among his steady clientele were the Rainiers, Kennedys, David Merrick, Rex Harrison, Burgess Meredith, Charles Laughton, Jean Gabin, Francoise Sagan, Diana Barrymore and Arthur Godfrey.”

It took a lot of courage for Father to immigrate to the United States; to work hard to make a life for himself and to start a family. He worked long hours. I hope that he gave himself a lot of credit for overcoming many challenges. Working and cooking with a blow torch was challenging; he suffered injuries. In the refrigerator at the restaurant Father had two aluminum bins with sticks of butter in them. One bin of butter was for cooking; in those days French chefs cooked with a lot of butter. The other bin was for slathering his hands with butter after sustaining bad burns while cooking with the blowtorch. He also had burns on his face and arms sometimes; hair was singed, too. When I greeted Father at the restaurant and at home, I always checked to see if the burns on his hands or face were healing, or if he had new ones. He often had deep cuts in his fingers from slicing food in the kitchen, but he never complained.

He always gave me a warm smile when he saw me, his blue eyes twinkling. Even when I got into trouble eating the pastries and baguettes at the restaurant, he never once spanked or hit me. I was spoiled; I was “the chef’s daughter.”

The Lee Strasberg Method Acting Studio, known as The Actors Studio, was located at Old Labor Stage at 432 West 44th Street in Hell’s Kitchen. Father put up a sign on the bulletin board at the Actor’s Studio: “A free entrée when you bring a friend.” In the 1950s and 60s many famous actors went to Father’s restaurant from word of mouth, newspaper articles, or some saw the sign on the bulletin board at the Actors Studio. According to newspaper clippings Father kept over the years, Harry Belafonte, Marilyn Monroe, Patricia Neal, Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, Eva Marie Saint, Maureen Stapleton, Rod Steiger, Eli Wallach, Marlon Brando, and Shelley Winters all dined at Lucky Pierre’s. The Press wrote about the celebrities and actors who dined at Lucky Pierre’s, business was brisk.

Grace Kelly frequented Lucky Pierre’s from the time when he had his small restaurant in Times Square and after she had married and became Princess Grace. A newspaper article by famous journalist Dorothy Kilgallen in “How the Other Half Lives” describes Prince Rainier and Princess Grace’s dinner at Lucky Pierre’s:

“Gadget loving Prince Rainier of Monaco whipped out a new one when he and Grace dined at Lucky Pierre’s the other night, a collapsible gold telescope almost the size of a pencil. When he was served a dish of scampi, His Serene Highness took the telescope out of his pocket, peered through it at the food on his plate, announced ‘This looks good!’ and dug in. With a collapsible fork?”

Before Grace Kelly married Prince Ranier of Monaco, she and Father double dated. Grace would be with her date, usually Marlon Brando, and Father was often with Grace Kelly’s best friend, Carolyn. Al Lettieri, who was a bartender at Father’s restaurant on and off, was also friends with Marlon Brando. Lettieri played the role of “The Turk” in the Godfather movies. He was an Italian American actor who spoke Italian fluently; his brother-in-law was Pasquale Eboli, brother of the Genovese Crime Family boss, Thomas Eboli. To add authenticity to the Godfather film, Al invited Marlon Brando and Al Pacino to his sister’s house in Fort Lee, New Jersey, to get a taste of a real crime family.

NBC studios was only a few blocks from Father’s restaurant, and Johnny Carson, host of the “Tonight Show,” spent a lot of time at Lucky Pierre’s. An anecdote about Johnny Carson (I was at the restaurant when this occurred). The backroom of the Father’s restaurant had a door concealed by blue velvet curtains. It was decorated with large Turkish pillows on the floor, three tables and chairs, and a few benches against the wall. Oriental damask rugs hung from the ceiling, and the walls were painted eggplant purple.

One evening, Father was in the kitchen preparing food, and Roger, a French waiter, was taking orders from a couple seated at a table. I had brought my homework assignments with me to the restaurant and was sitting alone at a corner table in the main dining area. Father took a brief break from cooking and went through the curtains of the door leading to the back room. I saw Johnny Carson run out from the backroom through the restaurant and out onto the sidewalk with his pants halfway down his legs. He had been in the backroom with a woman, although he was married to his first wife at the time. The restaurant was a convenient rendezvous location for Johnny Carson. 

Years later, Father had a restaurant in Toluca Lake, California, also called “Lucky Pierre’s.” Johnny Carson went into the restaurant one night and told Father, “Lucky, I had never felt so embarrassed in my life. I was standing on 55th street with my pants down!”

Lady Iris Mountbatten was Mother’s best friend and loved jazz. I write about her in another anecdote. Lady Iris married musician Michael Bryan who had been bartending at Father’s restaurant for a while. For years Father would tell the story about Albert Einstein, the famous physicist, who would order onion soup from the restaurant and asked Father to make sure to strain out all the onions.

Father had met Kenneth MacLeish and Peter Gimel at his restaurant and was subsequently introduced to French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau. MacLeish had been the senior science editor at Life Magazine back in the day and a skilled diver who had joined Peter Gimbel, a filmmaker and journalist, to film and explore the SS Andrea Doria. The SS Andrea Doria was a luxury transatlantic ocean liner of the Italian Line which sank in 1956 off the Atlantic, the eastern coast of New York, in a collision with a Swedish liner, the Stockholm. In discussions at the restaurant, Father became interested in using powdered seaweed (red) in his sauces. He learned about carrageenan and it’s many uses as a thickener. Years later he had a health food store in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which he named the “Sea Cure” which featured a line of shampoos and skin care items with carrageenan. They were excellent products.

Father was tall, handsome, and debonair; had blue eyes and a heavy French accent. He was very popular with the ladies, a real charmer. I recall one afternoon on Valentine’s Day, Mother, her friend Roya Ribble (an Australian ballet dancer), and I went by the restaurant in the afternoon after they picked me up from my ballet class. There was a line of beautiful women outside Lucky Pierre’s restaurant wearing winter coats; it was February.

Father was seated in a chair behind a small folding table in front of the restaurant door; he wore a suit and tie. Seated in the chair next to him was an attractive young woman whom he was kissing. Mother was a very beautiful woman who looked a lot like the actress Ava Gardner, and Roya looked like the actress Kim Novak. I was walking behind them, a little girl in an everyday dress; we stopped in front of Father at the table. Mother looked at Father and asked him what he thought he was doing. He looked up at her and was embarrassed. The woman he had been kissing looked offended and told Mother that there was an ad in the newspaper!

Mother was furious and asked, “What ad?”

Father told her he had taken out an ad in the newspaper; he was giving away free kisses on Valentine’s Day. Mother turned around and looked at the line of women in front of the restaurant, perhaps ten in all, and let them know that she was Lucky Pierre’s wife and that the “party was over.”

Father retorted, “Well, I have to prep food for tonight anyway.”