In C to you, Jean Imbert evoked with emotion the memory of his grandmother with whom he had opened a restaurant and especially this adorable letter that she had addressed to him and which now sits in his office.
Jean Imbert won the third season of Top chef in 2012. Since then, he has had a brilliant career behind the stove. He very recently took over from Alain Ducasse at the Hôtel Plaza Athénée. A new challenge that has earned him a lot of criticism. “I’ve been criticized for 20 years, told that I’m not going to make it. Even when I won Top chef, we were saying : ‘He’s not going to get there.’ But it was my dream to have the Plaza Athénée and to take over from Alain Ducasse “, he retorted in Day-to-day. But before leading this project, Jean Imbert joined forces with his grandmother Nicole, then aged 92, to open the restaurant. Granny in Paris. An establishment that the chef has chosen to close, after the disappearance of his beloved grandmother in January 2021.
A letter that sits in his office
In C to you, Pierre Lescure released an adorable video of Jean Imbert and his grandmother cutting kings cakes. Images that touched the chef, who returned to the establishment he created with him. “I am proud to have done the restaurant with her. Sometimes there are projects, we say to ourselves: ‘Shall we do them, don’t we do them?’ And sometimes there is something instinctive where in fact, you have to do it, you have to take the plunge “, he noted. “And she sends you the stars of the sky, she wrote it to you”, added the columnist who took part in the show Friday despite a health concern. “It’s a letter that you keep in your office”, explained the host. “I don’t know how you know that. I must have shown it to you, but it is true that she wrote me a letter when I opened Mahogany, I was 22 years old. An incredible letter that is at the entrance of my office, where she says to me: ‘I will not be there to see when you have stars, but I will send them to you from the sky’“, added the winner of Top chef, obviously very moved at this memory. “Emotion sequence, I have to stop“, he concluded to put an end to his.
His victory in Top chef marked his father
And cooking is definitely a family affair for Jean Imbert, who reconsidered his father’s emotion when he had won Top chef, recalling that he assumed to be a child of the cooking competition. “It’s true that my father, he said that day was the happiest day of his life. It was only Top Chef, but in fact it was more what it got for my relatives. It was beautiful“, he remarked.