Boulevard Eugène Cornuche

Eugène Cornuché is a French entrepreneur, owner of the Maxim's restaurant, manager of the Trouville casino, and later founder of the Deauville casino. Son of a wine merchant, who runs a café, the young Eugène performs various menial tasks. As a teenager, he worked at Chez Durand, place de la Madeleine in Paris, then in various houses. With Maxime Gaillard, he founded the Maxime et Georges, a bistro for coachmen, which was to become Maxim's restaurant, and which was soon a fashionable place. He soon took over the Maxime et Georges after Maxime Gaillard's death in 1895, and renamed it Maxim's in the English style, to make the restaurant the place to be for celebrities and socialites at the beginning of the 20th century. It is in particular at the time of the Universal Exhibition of 1900 that the restaurant established its reputation by becoming an Art Nouveau brasserie, earning Eugène Cornuché the nickname of Napoleon of the restaurateurs. In 1905, he was asked by the municipality of Trouville to take over the management of the resort's casino, which enabled Trouville to bring some of Cornuché's Parisian clientele to the Normandy coast. In 1909, it is envisaged to rebuild the casino, but the project supported by Cornuché is not the one which is retained; he then gives his resignation and goes to find the mayor of Deauville, Désiré Le Hoc, to whom he proposes his project. Thus was born in 1912 the casino of Deauville, contributing to the success of the Normandy resort. Eugène Cornuché died on 1 April 1926 in Paris. His partner François André - Lucien Barrière's uncle - took over the Deauville casino.