When he was 16, chef Jean Imbert spent the Cannes Film Festival peeling carrots in the kitchens of the Palais and passed time sitting on benches hoping to get a glimpse of his favorite directors.
“Sometimes I would wait for hours just to maybe cross Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg or George Lucas. It wasn’t like being a ‘fan,’ I was just passionate about the cinema. I was passionate about movies,” he said.
After he won France’s version of “Top Chef,” Cannes Film Festival artistic director Thierry Frémaux called him up to cook for the president’s dinner. That year Steven Spielberg was head of the jury.
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“I still have the picture in my phone,” he said of a snap of him and his brothers posing with the famous director. “For me, it was crazy.”
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Now he’ll return to Cannes as the head chef of the storied Hotel Martinez, debuting the first day of the festival.
“It’s a life connection, in a sense. I don’t know if it was ‘meant to be,’ but when they proposed it to me — and I say no to a lot of projects — I couldn’t say no, because it’s part of my own story,” he said.
He’ll start this festival opening the Martinez beach restaurant on Tuesday, which will host the festival’s Jeune Cinema dinner, L’Oréal’s Lights on Women Award gala, and many of the festival’s famously languorous lunches, including one hosted by Carita creative director and celebrity hairstylist John Nollet. Imbert will take over the hotel’s main restaurant later this year.
“It’s a double challenge taking over the Martinez and doing the Cannes Film Festival. It’s going to be big, it’s going to be complicated, and it’s going to be very challenging. But this is why we do this job,” he said. “Every hour will count.”
To debut a new restaurant on the opening day of the biggest event of the year is bold, but Imbert’s career has been marked by such moves.
He opened his first restaurant in Paris at the age of 22, and went on to his TV victory nine years later. The win vaulted him to instant fame, and since then he’s collaborated with Pharrell Williams on pop-up restaurants in Saint-Tropez and Ibiza, cooked for Beyoncé and Jay-Z on tour, and was named the successor to Alain Ducasse at the Plaza Athénée in 2020.
Imbert is also the chef at the Monsieur Dior restaurant in the brand’s Avenue Montaigne flagship, where he imbues his dishes with fashion references, particularly for the dinners that follow shows from menswear designer Kim Jones or womenswear designer Maria Grazia Chiuri.
“It’s cliché to say that food is also storytelling, but it is so true. People want to project themselves and the food is not the king of the project. Food has to be linked to the design of the collection,” he said. He spent three years researching Christian Dior and the history of the house just to find the right links from the brand’s history to create the restaurant.
In Cannes, he has secretly spent months sussing out the Martinez, tasting the food and reimagining what a modern menu can be. “We’re asking ourselves what is the balance [of a menu] in the South of France in 2023 and then taking a bit of a longer view,” he said, emphasizing that this is not a film festival pop-up. “The hospitality world is moving really fast, but you have to project yourself in a few years’ time. Making something successful for two weeks is easy. Taking over a palace like the Martinez is more to be involved in creating something that will last for a long time.”
Still, he said, a restaurant is always changing and he’s always looking for new ideas and inspirations. “I never think something is ‘done.’ I always want to move and think, ‘How can we do better, how can we improve things?’”
Imbert intends to play up the hotel’s connections with cinema. The beach menu will be designed to look like a film poster, while the 150 seats will be directors’ chairs emblazoned with the names of famous actors and directors from the movie world.
“I love the details in our hospitality job because this is what makes a difference — it’s down to details. So I’m working a lot on everything from the water glasses to the napkins, everything.”
Imbert will differentiate from what he does at Plaza Athénée by drawing on the cuisine of the South of France. “At the Martinez, if you open a window you have the Mediterranean before your eyes, and it’s something that I can’t do in Paris,” he said of being inspired by the local produce and seafood.
Imbert is so devoted to film and the festival that he returns every year — he even shared a photo of two decades worth of saved badges on Instagram — not only to cook for private events and brand dinners such as Dior, but also to line up for the legendary early morning screenings.
“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is on his wish list this year, as is the new Martin Scorsese film “Killers of the Flower Moon.” He has a busy schedule helming the kitchen, but still has his badge ready.
“I’m sad because I see that it’s close to four hours long. It’s going to be complicated, but I will try,” he said of the Scorsese film.