Pop Culture References of Wizard101: Polaris – Inspector Escoffier

Inspector Escoffier – Auguste Escoffier
https://wiki.wizard101central.com/wiki/NPC:Inspector_Escoffier
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Escoffier

Inspector Escoffier

Inspector Escoffier is a crooked inspector who is attempting to steal money from Taylor Coleridge and his Tiki Bar establishment. He appears during the quest Captain No Captain.

Georges Auguste Escoffier (October 28, 1846 – February 12, 1935) was a French chef, restaurateur, and culinary writer who popularized and updated traditional French cooking methods. Much of Escoffier’s technique was based on that of Marie-Antoine Carême, one of the codifiers of French haute cuisine; Escoffier’s achievement was to simplify and modernize Carême’s elaborate and ornate style. In particular, he codified the recipes for the five mother sauces. Referred to by the French press as roi des cuisiniers et cuisinier des rois (“king of chefs and chef of kings”), Escoffier was a preeminent figure in London and Paris during the 1890s and the early part of the 20th century.

Auguste Escoffier from The Gourmet’s Guide to London (1914) by Nathaniel Newnham-Davis

Alongside the recipes, Escoffier elevated the profession. In a time when kitchens were loud, riotous places where drinking on the job was commonplace, Escoffier demanded cleanliness, discipline, and silence from his staff. In bringing order to the kitchen, he tapped into his own military experience to develop the hierarchical brigade de cuisine system for organizing the kitchen staff which is still standard in many restaurants today. He worked in partnership with hotelier César Ritz, rising to prominence together at the Savoy in London serving the elite of society, and later at the Ritz Hotel in Paris and the Carlton in London.

Escoffier published Le Guide Culinaire, which is still used as a major reference work, both in the form of a cookbook and a textbook on cooking. Escoffier’s recipes, techniques and approaches to kitchen management remain highly influential today, and have been adopted by chefs and restaurants not only in France, but also throughout the world.

The current list of all the (known) Polaris references can be found here.

Although I am well versed in Pop Culture references but I do not claim to have caught them all. Let me know your favorites in the comments and if I’ve missed one you caught, let me know so I can add it to the list.

Text for this article is excerpted from the linked wiki pages

Inspector Escoffier image is from Wizard101, and is copyright of KingsIsle Entertainment

Auguste Escoffier image is borrowed from Wikipedia. It is in the public domain.

Image usage qualifies as fair use under US copyright law.

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