Lucas, Dione, 1909-1971

Restaurateur, author, and teacher, Dione (Wilson) Lucas was born in London and studied at L'Ecole du Cordon Bleu before serving as a chef's apprentice at the Restaurant Drouant in Paris. In the early 1930s she opened Le Petit Cordon Bleu Restaurant and Cooking School in London with Rosemary Hume. She married Colin Lucas, an architect; they had two sons. The marriage later ended in divorce. Moving to the United States in 1940, she opened her first Cordon Bleu restaurant and school in New York City in 1942, and in the mid-1940s launched a television cooking show. She traveled widely, demonstrating and teaching cooking, and published many cookbooks including Cordon Bleu Cook Book (1947) and The Gourmet Cooking School Cookbook (1964, with Darlene Geis). In 1956 she opened the Egg Basket Restaurant in New York followed by the Ginger Man Restaurant in Lincoln Center, the Brasserie Restaurant in Bennington, Vt., the Dione Lucas Gourmet Center in New York, and the Heritage Village Restaurant in Southbury, Conn. Lucas died of pneumonia in London in December 1971.