Jean-Francois Pomares steps down after nearly 50 years at the Carlton Hotel. From Sharon Stone to Robert De Niro, he's seen them all—without ever leaving the dining room.
French maître d'hôtel Jean-Francois Pomares says he never has time to see a film at the Cannes Festival, but he has met many of its stars over the years, including a young Sharon Stone.
"It was at table 24, I still remember," said the 61-year-old who oversees the dining room at the Carlton Hotel in the French Riviera city.
At the time, "nobody knew her, but then she came back two or three years later. By then, she was a superstar... and she recognized me."
Since he started work at the age of 15, Pomares has seen them all during the festival at the start of each Cannes summer: from Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger to Michael Jackson and, more recently, Robert De Niro.
Pomares, who will retire this year, said he usually finishes work at around three or four o'clock in the morning.
It was a good time to bump into film stars.
One winter, French screen legend Alain Delon, who died aged 88 last year, asked him to open the hotel's dining room where the festival's official dinners had been held in previous years.
"I think that night he needed to remember his past," Pomares said.
"For 15 minutes, he started telling me that at this table, so-and-so was sitting, and so on."
Gives me a rush
The smiling maître d' said his job was all about "preparing for the unpredictable" and never saying "no."
"I love it, the adrenaline gives me a rush," Pomares said.
He once had to help organize a last-minute marriage proposal, dashing to find a bunch of flowers and decorate the right spot before nightfall. He was invited to the wedding.
"We also get a lot of eccentrics who come because it's the festival, hoping to be spotted," Pomares said.
But he says the essence of his job is adapting to people.
Pomares once hosted a couple in their seventies who he said looked "outside their comfort zone."
The wife told him they used to work at a hospital in the southern city of Marseille — he as a cleaner and she in the cafeteria — and that the dinner was a gift from their children.
"I did my utmost to make sure they left with the best memory" of the evening, he said. "A week later, their daughter called to say thank you."
By Juliette RABAT / AFP
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