For those who aren’t familiar with the dish, crêpes suzette is a hot dessert consisting of thin pancakes or crêpes, served with a hot sauce of sugar, butter, orange juice, and a liqueur –- typically Grand Marnier. It’s usually prepared table-side, so diners can enjoy the dramatic grand finale as brandy is poured over the crêpes, which are then flambéed (ignited). So that covers the "flaming" and the "crêpes" parts, but who was the mysterious Suzette? This is where things get more complicated, since there are several conflicting accounts, but according to the most popular version, the story goes like this.
Crêpes suzette is said to be the invention of Henri Charpentier, the world’s first celebrity chef, in 1895. At that time, Henri was 14 years old and, according to his memoirs, working as an assistant waiter at the Café de Paris in Monte Carlo. While preparing a dish of crêpes for the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII of England, he had a kitchen catastrophe and accidentally set the dessert on fire. In the desperate hope that it might be salvageable, he tasted the dish and found it to be "the most delicious melody of sweet flavors" that he’d ever tasted. Phew!
The Prince concurred and, upon learning that the dessert did not yet have an official name, he asked that it be named for Suzette, the fifteen-year-old daughter of one of his guests and the only female present at the meal. Charpentier later emigrated to the United States, where he became chef to John D. Rockefeller and the list of his illustrious patrons and friends is said to have included the likes of J.P. Morgan, Theodore Roosevelt, Sarah Bernhardt, Rudyard Kipling, Woodrow Wilson, Florenz Ziegfeld, Bing Crosby, John Wayne, Ingrid Bergman, Marilyn Monroe, Queen Victoria, and "Diamond" Jim Brady, to name a few.
That’s the most common account, but several other variations on the theme exist. In one of them, Suzette was not the innocent daughter of the Prince’s friend, but rather one of his mistresses in the German spa town of Baden-Baden, or even a Parisian courtesan.
Another version has it that Charpentier was not the inventor at all; instead, the dish was the creation of a certain Monsieur Joseph, the restaurateur in charge of supplying a particular Parisian theater with pancakes for a production they had running and that he named it either after a maid in the play or a German actress called Suzanne "Suzette" Reichenburg.
Alternatively, it was created by a chef named Jean Reboux for Louis XV of France at the instigation of Princess Suzette de Carignan, who was anxious to win the King’s affections.
Yet another source credits Escoffier, "The King of Chefs and Chef of Kings," as creating the dish, along with other classics such as peach Melba and prawns Marie Rose, while he was chef at London’s Savoy Hotel from 1890 to 1898. Charpentier went to his deathbed insisting that the dish was his invention, however, and he remains the most likely candidate.
In terms of places in Las Vegas where you can enjoy this famous dish, our investigations have proven them to be few and far between. While other flaming desserts, like bananas Foster and cherries jubilee, are widely available, the list of seemingly likely gourmet French and other candidates that turn out not to offer crêpes suzettes includes: Michael’s (Barbary Coast), Bouchon, Lutèce and Pinot Brasserie (Venetian), Eiffel Tower and Mon Ami Gabi (Paris), L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon (MGM Grand), Alizé (Palms), Renoir (Mirage), Le Cirque (Bellagio), Alex (Wynn Las Vegas), Top of the World (Stratosphere), André’s (Monte Carlo), Fiore (Rio), Bally’s Steak House, Rosemary’s, Pamplemousse, and Fleur de Lys.
It was only when we called Steakhouse46 at the Flamingo that we got to the bottom of why this is so: Apparently, when the mob was running this town, crêpes suzette was a big favorite and widely available. While the steakhouse at the Flamingo was still called Conrad's, it was on the menu, but there's much less call for old-school desserts nowadays, although chefs still love to make crêpes suzettes when they have the opportunity. Here are the venues we found that still serve it on a regular basis, or by request:
