FOR THREE MONTHS last winter, chef Jean Imbert retreated to his cabin in Brittany to re-read the great classics of French gastronomy that he had studied early in his career. He pored over by Marie-Antoine Carême, the 19th-century chef who cooked for Napoleon I and dazzled the Paris elite with his towering dessert centrepieces, and by Auguste Escoffier, who is famous for codifying the kitchen brigade system.
