Jean Imbert

Chef Jean Imbert Caviar brioche

A Culinary Classicist _

Hôtel Plaza Athénée welcomed chef Jean Imbert in 2021, placing him at the helm of the hotel’s culinary icon and haven for ‘haute gastronomie’, Jean Imbert au Plaza Athénée; in under a year, it earned a Michelin star. Chef Imbert entered boldly, and with a radically simple concept: return to the classics.

o paraphrase Oscar Wilde, sometimes being too modern can appear old-fashioned. The talk of the town, French chef Jean Imbert, flips the coin by making the old-fashioned appear incredibly modern.

Whilst also overseeing the Le Relais Plaza restaurant at Hôtel Plaza Athénée, a Parisian institution with its original 1936 art deco interior, it is at Jean Imbert au Plaza Athénée that the chef is pushing creativity through the happy constraints of tradition. Each dish on the menu is inspired by an iconic recipe taken from France’s most storied culinary heritage.

“With tremendous humility, I had this desire, ingrained in me since childhood, to pay tribute to classical French cuisine, which is both sumptuous and fascinating, and which transcends trends throughout the centuries, while remaining deeply modern,” he explains. The dish ‘Langouste en Bellevue’, for example, served with mixed vegetables, arrives majestically in the dining room with a cascade of jelly medallions adorning its back. Other dishes, such as the ‘Vol-au-Vent’, ‘Veal Orloff’ or ‘Canard à la Bigarade’ (duck with orange sauce, topped with citrus fruits before being roasted) are veritable French legends.

“I would like our guests to be instantly transported to a world beyond time when they pass through the door of the restaurant, as I would have dreamed of dining at the tables of Auguste Escoffier, François Vatel or Antonin Carême in a bygone era.” Sources of direct inspiration for chef Imbert, they are also authors of some of his first cookbooks.

With pastry chefs Angelo Musa and Elisabeth Hot presenting equally iconic desserts, such as the ‘Ambassadeur’, individually hand-decorated with rose petals, and an evening’s choreography perfected by maître d’ and restaurant director Denis Courtiade, a diner’s experience is what Escoffier posited as the ideal of cooking when he wrote at the turn of the 19th century, into the 20th: “Good food is the foundation of genuine happiness.” In France, certainly at Hôtel Plaza Athénée at least, this is very much still believed to be so.

Jean Imbert au Plaza Athénée 25, Avenue Montaigne, Paris, 75008 T.+33 (0)1 53 67 65 00 , for reservations