What you need to know before chef Julien Royer opens Louise in Hong Kong
Royer’s Singapore eatery Odette, which serves Asian-inflected modern French cuisine, clinched top spot at the Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants 2019 awards
Just hours before the Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants 2019 results were announced, Julien Royer, the chef-owner of Odette, Singapore, was overheard talking to a journalist about Louise, his soon-to-open casual French diner named after his paternal grandmother, Jean Louise, at PMQ in Central.
The opening of Royer’s Hong Kong restaurant could not be better timed. That same night, the Singapore French fine-dining restaurant run by the Auvergne-born chef hit a home run by clinching top spot at the awards ceremony at Wynn Palace, Macau, toppling four-years-in-a-row champion Gaggan in Bangkok.
“It’s a night of shock, surprise and many emotions,” said Royer, who attributed his restaurant’s meteoric rise to a business partner who believed in him and to his hard-working, well-oiled team (“everyone from the kitchen, including my three sous chefs, to the service staff on the floor who put in so much effort to deliver hospitality”).
Unlike the more casual Louise, Royer’s 40-seat fine-dining restaurant at Singapore’s National Gallery is known for its Asian-inflected modern French cuisine. Named Odette after his maternal grandmother who cooked for him and his elder sister when they were young, the tasting menu-only restaurant serves up Zen plates of refinement crafted from French and Japanese ingredients picked at the height of the season.
His most iconic dish yet is Monsieur Fabien Deneour’s Brittany pigeon, presented whole in a handmade wooden box with a built-in smoking chamber, its breast flecked with aromatic kampot pepper, its leg served crisp, its liver served as a parfait with aged sherry vinegar, and its heart skewered and grilled.
“The new generation of diners generally prefers less stuffy fine dining,” says Royer, who has spent 11 years in Singapore and believes he has his finger on the pulse of his guests.
At his restaurant, diners are served multiple snacks, a parade of petit fours and no more than a maximum of eight courses at lunch and dinner. “They want the meal to be quicker and to have fewer – but more substantial – courses.”
Not bad for a boy born into a farming family who only discovered the exquisite world of fine dining at the age of 19, when he stepped into the vaunted kitchen of Michel Bras as a junior cook.