3 Plaza Athénée anecdotes told by Jean Imbert
The book "Plaza Athénée" will be published in early November by Assouline. An opportunity for Jean Imbert to reveal a few anecdotes about his arrival at the palace and his ambitions buried for many years.
In early November 2023, Editions Assouline published "Plaza Athénée", a 272-page book retracing the history of this legendary luxury hotel on Avenue Montaigne in Paris. Conceived and developed in partnership with Jean Imbert, the book highlights the beauty and modernity of this 25,000 m² hotel, with its restaurants, bars, terraces, apartments and backstage areas, represented in over 300 shots by photographer Olivier Pilcher.
As the pages turn, the reader learns more about the Plaza Athénée from writer Marc Lambron, as well as from Jean Imbert, the palace's head chef since 2021. In turn, the story plunges us into the heart of the hotel's most beautiful suites, before introducing us to various members of staff, from the florist to the housekeepers, not forgetting the many stars who flock to the Plaza Athénée for decades - even more so since the arrival of Jean Imbert, who is known to be close to celebrities such as Marion Cotillard, Beyoncé and Jay-Z, and Pharrell Williams, all photographed alongside the chef.
The book also gives a voice to Angelo Musa, pastry chef at the Plaza Athénée, revealing the hustle and bustle of the kitchens, then the calm of the dining room, with photos of already legendary dishes such as the vol-au-vent at the gourmet restaurant, or the mussels and pommes pailles at the Relais Plaza.
olivier Pilcher
3 anecdotes from Jean Imbert
Jean Imbert doesn't just pose in this book, as he signs a ten-page introduction, looking back on his gradual rise since winning the Top Chef show in 2012. In it, the chef recounts his childhood, spent on the cliffs of Brittany, his various projects, including the creation of his restaurant with his now-deceased grandmother, but also a few anecdotes that prove that his arrival at the Plaza Athénée was anything but coincidental.
The chef thus reveals that back in the 1990s, the palace's director François Delahaye had already come to eat at l'Acajou, Jean Imbert's first restaurant located in Paris's 16ᵉ arrondissement. "Et patatras! My mom spills a glass of wine on her shirt. The shame, the wreckage foretold," recalls Jean Imbert, who later gave François Delahaye a daring gift: a book on the history of brothels in Paris. From this unusual episode "a friendship was born. And from this friendship was also born my desire to venture into the Plaza", says the chef.
Jean Imbert also remembers starting to frequent the palace after his victory in Top Chef, and even then assuring himself: "One day, I'll be the chef at the Plaza." "Something just clicked. I believed in it. The more people laughed at me, the more I believed. And a lot of people laughed."
But the most amusing side note is undoubtedly this one: "Here, I found the pawn who used to stick to me in high school: I was regularly excluded from classes: he's the lawyer at the Plaza Athénée. His detention reports - 424 hours accumulated over my senior year, the school record - are also hung up, framed in [my] office: it's tasty."
To find out more, you'll have to wait until November for the publication of the book Plaza Athénée, published by Assouline.
