For three days, EDEN followed chef Christian Sinicropi through Côte d'Azur, seeing the region through his eyes. Not as a destination, but as a composition of light, memory, instinct, and sensation. What emerged was a collection of places, gestures, and fleeting moments that shape his relationship with the region, offering a portrait of Cannes as experienced by someone who knows how to look, feel, and taste.
There are chefs who cook for a city, and there are chefs who are the city. Christian Sinicropi belongs to the second kind, carrying two Michelin stars with the quiet authority of someone who has never needed to prove himself twice.
From the discipline of his kitchen, to the celebrated dinner set for the jury of the Cannes Film Festival, a table few will ever see, prepared for those entrusted with deciding what the world calls a masterpiece, to a quiet partnership with his wife Catherine, a ceramicist trained at the École des Beaux-Arts de Vallauris, turning each plate into something closer to a sculpture. A world that behaves, at times, like an artist's studio.
Cannes is also where EDEN chose to open one of its most significant addresses in France, alongside Saint-Tropez. So when we considered who could guide our readers through this coastline, its rhythm, its light, its true addresses beyond the Croisette, one name stood above the rest.
Some places are not visited. They are earned.
THE ANTECHAMBER OF PARADISE — Lérins Islands
Saint-Honorat Island. The monks' island. We love to rest there and live moments of connection, carried by the soothing energy of this place off the coast of Cannes. There, nature preserves its balance, and time seems to have stopped. Between the vineyards and the pines, only the sound of wind and waves accompanies the silence. One comes here to breathe, and leaves changed - as if relieved of a weight one never knew they carried. A little closer to oneself.
MY TERRITORY, SEEN FROM ABOVE — Caussols Plateau
On the Caussols plateau, in the hinterland of Cannes, the mauve lines of lavandin let their scent drift through the pure air. From up here, one can glimpse much of the Riviera. We love to come here to gather, for my extraction laboratory, a few wild plants - thyme, savory, or fennel - and rediscover their original taste. Tucked into a fold of the rock, invisible from the path, stands the troglodyte chapel of Notre-Dame de Calern: it reveals itself only to those who know where to look, or who accept to lose their way a little.
SEA WANDERER — Bay of Cannes
The sun has barely risen over the sea when I set off with my van, electric Efoil in tow. I glide above the sea spray off the Bay of Cannes, alone with the elements, with nature, with life.
A LIVING LAND OF ART — Côte d'Azur
Here, the Côte d'Azur is as much told as it is beheld. Gastronomy, the perfume of Grasse, the cinema of Cannes, the ceramics of Vallauris, the blown glass of Biot - every gesture carries the trace of a century of creation. The Picasso, Matisse, Fernand Léger, Cocteau and Jean Marais museums, or the Maeght Foundation, keep this memory alive, and we love to nourish ourselves at these marked places, where the Mediterranean light continues, even today, to inspire.
A PLACE ALMOST OUTSIDE OF TIME — Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat
A picnic at the Villa Santo Sospir, in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. This mythical house of Jean Cocteau, nicknamed the "tattooed villa," seems inhabited by the artist's spirit - more than 200 frescoes painted in 1950 cover its walls like a waking dream. Listed as a Historic Monument, it reveals itself only by reservation, to those who know how to knock on the right door - and we left our own imprint there, the time of a picnic suspended in the middle of the past, of a fleeting present.
MATTER AS MEMORY — Vallauris & Once Upon a Time
Objects were once made to last, shaped by an intelligent, demanding craftsmanship where raw material traveled through time. Today, relegated to flea markets, dust-covered, they bear witness to a know-how at the opposite end of our consumer society. This is precisely why we love to hunt for them, and offer them a second life.
A precise chronology structures this part of his life: ceramicist Glag from 2006, the Beaux-Arts de Vallauris in 2009 with his wife Catherine, the first collection in 2010. On January 26, 2010, Catherine presented a service inspired by Tim Burton, then president of the Cannes Film Festival jury; Gilles Jacob praised the result that same evening. The editions followed one another until 2023, with artists succeeding each other since 2011 - Moya, Steph Cop, Alexöne, Shaka, Gris 1, Mô, Dôme, writer Sylvie Bourgeois.
WE LOVE TO WANDER THROUGH FORVILLE MARKET
The beating heart of Cannes, where fishermen and market gardeners lay down, each morning, the fruit of their labor. Nearby, on the Siagne plain, producers like Jean-Charles Orso carry on this same taste of the land, and we love, in our own way, to tend our own vegetable garden, to rediscover this simple gesture and this freshness. We also seek out small olive oil producers, and make our own vinegars, true to this spirit of authenticity.
AT HOME, FAR FROM RESTAURANTS
Here, cooking becomes memory and patience. We love to salt our fresh anchovies or let them rest in vinegar, to let our stale bread sit a whole night before it becomes pain bagnat. To pick zucchini flowers in the garden and slip them, for the time of a picnic, into a light, golden batter. Comes the summer of basil, which we crush into a paste so it survives the winter and finds again, on our pasta, its pine nuts and its scent of summer; comes the sun that dries our tomato petals, barely veiled in salt, ripening in our jars - the dense red pulp we will keep, like a little piece of that summer, for the months without one.
FROM CANNES TO SAINT-TROPEZ — The Road as a Breath
On my motorcycle, a 1970 BMW R60/5, the sea appears almost immediately, flat and blue to the horizon. Past Théoule, the road climbs into the Estérel and the landscape shifts: red rock rises from the dark green of the pines and cork oaks, the Corniche d'Or winds along the cliffside, and at every turn a different cove reveals itself below - turquoise water, sometimes a pebble beach, sometimes nothing but a rock plunging straight into the sea. The maquis is fragrant, resin and myrtle warmed by the sun, mingled with the iodine rising from the coves. At the Pointe de l'Aiguille, the whole massif unfolds at once, red and green all the way to the sea, without a single straight line. Then Le Trayas, where the road overlooks calanques so small they are almost secret. Past Agay, the terrain softens, the red rock gives way to sandy beaches, and the light changes as the Gulf of Saint-Tropez opens before me.
A THOUGHT, BEFORE THE PLATE — The Considerable
Before cutting, one must look. For Christian Sinicropi, a piece of meat has lived a life before becoming a dish — and that life deserves to be honored. It is the starting point of his entire craft, against the idea that nature would belong to us by nature. What is elsewhere simply called "produce," he calls the Considerable: a living thing carrying memory and dignity. A word that erases another, the way a painter chooses their primary colors.
Time, for him, becomes an ingredient in its own right - measured at the exact instant a scent tips over or fades. He summons Kairos, the Greek time of opportunity, rather than that of the clock.
In his extraction laboratory, he maps, note by note, the structure of a perfume - top, heart, base - onto that of a dish. This is where Grasse meets the kitchen.
"I breathe in life. My tongue brings light to my soul."
Christian Sinicropi