Roland Jeannier, a restaurateur who brought the culinary traditions of his native France to Baltimore, died of vascular disease March 19 at his Evergreen home. He was 92.
Born in La Seyne-sur-Mer, France, he was the son of Rene Jeannier, a World War I veteran disabled by a German mustard gas attack, and Berthe. He worked in Aix en Provence and later in Paris at the luxury hotel Plaza Athenee.
“I come from a long line of good cooks. My mother and grandparents were both wonderful cooks,” he told The Sun in 2007 .
Mr. Jeannier learned English and in 1958 moved to Boston where his sister lived. He wound up in Baltimore and cooked at the old Les Tuileries restaurant in the Stafford Hotel in Mount Vernon.
“He is the last of that generation. … He was an old-school French chef who had exacting standards,” said restaurant owner Ned Atwater, who trained with Mr. Jeannier. “With Roland, you used what was fresh, you respected the food and you wasted nothing. It was not a job. It was a profession with Roland. He expected the highest standards and it was an honor to have worked for him.”
Mr. Jeannier went on to work at other now-closed Baltimore restaurants, Danny’s on Charles Street and Perring Place in Northeast Baltimore. He was also a chef at the Baltimore Country Club, the Greenspring Valley Club and the Woodholme Country Club.
He went from Ordell Braase’s Flaming Pit to the old Country Fare Inn on Westminster Pike as a partner. When that restaurant was sold, he moved to Saint Paul, Minnesota, because of a noncompete clause in his contract.
In 1985 he opened his own Jeannier’s in the dining room of the Broadview Apartments in Tuscany-Canterbury.
“He served elegant French food in a lovely setting,” said Meg Fairfax Fielding, a customer. “His restaurant was not pretentious. It was old school. I went there with my grandmother, who was old Baltimore and had never cooked a day in her life. She had the shad roe because it was just what you had. We liked the crepes for dessert.”
A 1994 Sun review described Jeannier’s as “an excellent restaurant” where the asparagus hollandaise was “so delicate and lemon-buttery that even a tree branch [worth of asparagus] would have tasted good.”
Sun critic Elizabeth Large wrote in 1994: “Come to think of it, I’ve never been disappointed with a sauce at Jeannier’s. While you could get grilled chicken or the crab cakes here, I’d order something a little more gussied up. Jeannier’s sauces are light but wonderfully rich — essences and reductions rather than gravies.”
Jack Elsby, a former business partner, said: “Roland was not always easy to work for, but he adored and treasured his cooks. He did not play favorites with his customers. He was democratic. People loved his country pate, onion soup and ratatouille nicoise.”
“Roland brought authenticity to Baltimore,” said Mike Vasta, manager of Bluestone in Timonium. “He did a few things that no one else did — his lamb was spectacular, his liver framboise raspberry vinaigrette was incredible. And the pike fish quenelle with crayfish cream sauce was something you had nowhere in Baltimore and perhaps could only get in New York.”
Mr. Jeannier sold his restaurant in 2005 .
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“Its closing marks the end of what was one of the bastions of French food in Baltimore for the past 20 years. Jeannier’s was beloved by many for some of the same reasons that others were put off by it — a fixed menu and a formal sensibility at a time when much of the restaurant industry was moving toward a lighter, more casual style of dining,” The Sun wrote when Mr. Jeannier left the business.
“Let me tell you what I don’t miss. I don’t miss the 12-or-more-hour days, and when you’re a chef-owner, the days are all long,” he said of his many years in the industry.
A funeral Mass is being planned.
Survivors include his wife, Charlene Clark, an artist; a half-sister, Helene, of France; and six grandchildren. His former wife, Collette, died in 1994. A son, Thierry Jeannier died in 2016. Another son, Merick Jeannier, died in 2023.
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