George Clooney is preparing, with Canadian Graham Porter, an Italian restaurant in Cotignac, in the Var. Var-Matin, picked up by Nice-Matin on 5 October 2026, gave the address: 11, cours Gambetta, the former Les 3 Marches, a pizzeria closed for about a year. Works are visible. A municipal order occupying public space covers 9 September to 9 November. Radio Cluj repeated the RADOR version on 19 October. The place is not open.

The calendar target, according to the Var daily, is spring 2027. Management at Porter’s Hôtel Lou Calen said it would not communicate “for the next six months”. There is no restaurant name, no announced chef, no menu. Mayor Jean-Pierre Véran confirmed, to Ici Côte d’Azur, a talk with Porter before the Les Toiles du Sud festival: “I don’t know any more.”

Clooney, 65, has lived for five years at Domaine du Canadel in Brignoles, some 20 kilometres away. The family, with twins Alexander and Ella, received French passports in December 2025. France 3 and Le Parisien repeated the same facts, with the same limit: a project, not an opening. Cotignac has about 2,000 residents.

Var-Matin calls it an upscale Italian restaurant. Radio Cluj translated “luxury”. Until there is a menu and a brigade, the label is the reporters’, not a Michelin inspection. A terrace and the possibility of private hire appear in the local report; they are not an events programme.

Anyone writing that Clooney “has opened in Provence” skips a year of announced building work. Anyone writing that Lou Calen has confirmed the partnership ignores the six-month silence. The facts are an address, a pavement order and two names: Clooney and Porter.

For a village of 2,000, a Hollywood name on cours Gambetta is a seasonal story. For a food reader, it is a building site. Spring 2027 is a newspaper target, not a booking date.

Image: Technob105, Cotignac centre, Var, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons; the archive village, not the site at 11 cours Gambetta.

Sources consulted: George Clooney to open an upscale Italian restaurant in the Var - Nice-Matin / Var-Matin; What is known about the Italian restaurant project in Cotignac - France 3.