When Cybèle Idelot welcomed us in a bright yellow apron and plastic clogs sinking into the earth – among rows of fava beans, beets and peas inside her Yvelines greenhouse – it was hard to imagine the glitz of her former lives. The 50-year-old chef spent her California childhood illuminated by Hollywood, alongside a father who was a screenwriter – for David Lynch and Francis Ford Coppola – and took her from set to set.
Her youth was nomadic, surrounded by privilege. She first donned a chef’s apron in 1997 for private dinners in Saint-Barthélemy, in the French Caribbean, and then for large-scale events such as cocktails for 2,000 guests during fashion weeks in New York. When she eventually settled in France in 2013, she opened her first French restaurant, La Table de Cybèle, with her husband Franck Idelot, a natural wine specialist, in the upscale Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt.
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