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.

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.

As an apprentice, Auguste was bullied and swatted by his uncle and his small stature made him even more of a target–he was too short to safely open oven doors.

Escoffier spent nearly seven years in the army—at first stationed in various barracks throughout France (including five months in Villefranche-sur-Mer, coincidentally not three miles from his old home in Nice), and later at Metz as chef de cuisine of the Rhine Army after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870.

At that time, the French Riviera was a winter resort: during the summers, Escoffier ran the kitchens of the Grand Hôtel National in Lucerne, also managed by Ritz.

[4][5] In 1890, Ritz and Escoffier accepted an invitation from Richard D'Oyly Carte to transfer to his new Savoy Hotel in London, together with the third member of their team, the maître d'hôtel, Louis Echenard.

[4] Ritz put together what he described as "a little army of hotel men for the conquest of London", and Escoffier recruited French cooks and reorganised the kitchens.

Other Escoffier creations, famous in their time, were the bombe Néro (a flaming ice-cream), fraises à la Sarah Bernhardt (for Sarah Bernhardt, strawberries with pineapple and Curaçao sorbet), baisers de Vierge (meringue with vanilla cream and crystallised white rose and violet petals) and suprêmes de volaille Jeannette (a cold jellied chicken breast with foie gras).

[3] On 8 March 1898, Ritz, Echenard and Escoffier were brought in front of the board and dismissed from the Savoy "for ... gross negligence and breaches of duty and mismanagement".

[8] The Star reported: "Three managers have been dismissed and 16 fiery French and Swiss cooks (some of them took their long knives and placed themselves in a position of defiance) have been bundled out by the aid of a strong force of Metropolitan police.

[3] Ritz paid £4,173 but he denied taking part in any illegal activity; he confessed to being overly generous with gifts to favoured guests and staff, the hotel paying for his home food and laundry, and similar infractions.

One hundred and forty-six German dignitaries were served a large multi-course luncheon, followed that evening by a monumental dinner that included the Kaiser's favourite strawberry pudding, named fraises Imperator by Escoffier for the occasion.

[4] Recalling these years, The Times said, "Colour meant so much to Escoffier, and a memory arises of a feast at the Carlton for which the table decorations were white and pink roses, with silvery leaves – the background for a dinner all white and pink, Borscht striking the deepest note, Filets de poulet à la Paprika coming next, and the Agneau de lait forming the high note.