The reputation at the most important film festival in the world was that it was eaten quickly, expensively and poorly, between two appointments to close film purchases or production contracts.
But the renewal also reached the restaurants of this city on the French Riviera, which is also a luxury destination the rest of the year.
Mauro Colagreco premiered on the first day of the contest in the busiest place in Cannes, the Terrasse d’Albane, on the roof of the JW Marriott hotel, with a spectacular view of the bay and the beach.
Invited to pilot the stove on the terrace, where every night the stars have fun, safe from the paparazzi, Colagreco proposes ultra-local cuisine, with fresh seafood, his well-known stuffed zucchini flower and desserts from his Argentine childhood, such as flan to dulce de leche.
Colagreco is the founder of the Mirazur restaurant, with three Michelin stars, located in Menton, near Monaco, which uses products from its own garden.
On the Terrasse d’Albane the challenge is considerable.
“The dishes need to come out quickly, people don’t have more than an hour per appointment. Sometimes they even have two lunches. They’re going to have an appetizer somewhere else and the main dish at my restaurant. It’s quite intense,” he explained in an interview with AFP.
“It is always a challenge to find your way in a place where you have no reference points,” he added.
Clients ask selfis non stop.
“I am someone who likes to stay down to earth, I have no desire to become a character, I want to continue being Mauro,” implored the chef.
A menu like a film script
Jean Imbert, who a year ago took over the kitchen of the legendary Martínez hotel, presented during this edition his new version of La Palme d’Or, a gastronomic and cinema-themed restaurant.
“I know the tricks of Cannes well,” Jean Imbert, who has not missed a festival since he was a teenager, told AFP.
“I would cook here and there in exchange for a ticket to a movie, they would kick me off the red carpet and I would have to run out and buy a bow tie in a hurry,” he said.
In this restaurant with another impressive terrace, Imbert serves a menu that is a dip in the bay of Cannes: scorpion fish, raw shrimp, red mullet gravlax with aioli and a frozen lemon for dessert.
The menu is presented as an annotated script. On a wall of the terrace, behind a display case, the boxer shorts from the movie Wild bullLeonardo DiCaprio’s glasses in The wolf of Wall Street or a copy of the script ET.
“Drowned”
Producers, actors, directors, politicians, diplomats, television, fashion and social media stars chain business lunches in Cannes for 15 days.
And everyone wants them to be with sea views. But the supply is necessarily limited.
“I ate a white pizza with seafood folded like a calzone, it can’t be,” said one of the star guests of the Croisette, Gianmarci Gioni, laughing out loud, after venturing into one of the dozens of restaurants in the center of Cannes.
The young Parisians of restaurant Vecchio, the duo Gianmarco Gorni and Hubert “Hub” Niveleau, who have established themselves in the trendy Perchoir in Paris, jumped at the opportunity when they were approached to create a temporary kitchen on a private beach.
“The beach is a great challenge: the team, the place, the public…” commented Italian chef Gianmarco Gorni. “Most of the restaurants that come here are brands that have been established for years, it is a challenge to impose a young name that has only been around for six months,” added his partner.
At Vecchio, customers pay about 100 euros (about $110) for spaghetti with lobster, although there is a more affordable version, with clams.
For hangovers, the chef recommends his emblematic vodka pasta, to cure evil with evil, and the well-known Italian affogato, the scoop of vanilla ice cream that, mixed with an espresso, wakes you up for the next movie session.
Source: AFP
