Geez, Louise
When it comes to blending style, substance and an element of surprise, this new Central restaurant by Yenn Wong and chef Julien Royer has it all tied up
When it comes to blending style, substance and an element of surprise, this new Central restaurant by Yenn Wong and chef Julien Royer has it all tied up
For JIA Group’s Yenn Wong, the timing couldn’t have been more fortuitous. This March, Julien Royer, the darling of Singapore and chefowner of fine-dining restaurant Odette, knocked Bangkok’s Gaggan off the top spot in the 2019 edition of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants. Within the same week, Julien announced he was teaming up with Yenn to open Louise, his first venture outside the Lion City. The zeitgeist was coming to Hong Kong. Thinking back, Yenn laughs at how seamlessly everything seemed to come together. The two had been friends for a long time—enamoured by Julien’s early work at Jaan in Singapore, Yenn had approached him to open a restaurant even before the chef had moved on to open Odette—but it wasn’t until recently that the two had the opportunity to join forces. After seeing the PMQ space Yenn proposed in mid-2018, Julien was sold, enraptured by the romance and character of the historic former Police Married Quarters.
The restaurant the two envisioned would be a far cry from a carbon copy of Odette—rather, Julien saw the space as warm, engaging, feminine, a place for congregation but not worship. “It’s a place to eat,” he says. “You can go in the afternoon and have a cappuccino and a nice little
madeleine. Or go for dinner and have something more substantial. Or go for a nice sandwich.” Raised in a family that valued hearty, nutritious food and grew their own produce in the Auvergne region of France, Julien was adamant that Louise would be a destination where diners could be enriched by the dishes.
It’s about going back to basics, he explains. “The menu is defined by cooking that takes time. Slow cooking, for example, but nothing sous vide. This is a classic casual restaurant where I want to do real cooking. I’m happy to share old recipes we tend to forget. Nowadays, all young chefs want to do is plate food with tweezers and make it pretty, but we tend to forget the taste. For me, the more time that passes, the more I tend to remove the unnecessary.”
That means dishes such as roasted chicken—locally sourced, no less—with a simple side of Japanese short-grain rice; a rustic steak tartare salted not with the traditional capers but the umami tang of anchovies; those beautiful madeleines, made from a recipe perfected by Maman Royer herself, served hot and golden. For Julien, Louise was a chance to showcase another side of his identity, one that is pared back but no less serious.
For Yenn, the period leading up to the opening was also one of soul-searching. “You have to always be on your toes,” she says. “You can’t think to yourself ‘Let’s just open 10 more of the same kind of restaurant’ and expect
“The menu is defined by cooking that takes time. Slow cooking, for example, but nothing sous vide”
it to work.” Slowing down, it seems, has become the new mantra for the restaurateur, who managed three new openings in 2016; expanded internationally the following year with a London branch of Duddell’s, the group’s finedining Cantonese restaurant; and listed her company on the Growth Enterprise Market of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in early 2018.
Sensing in the previous year a surge in luxurious, highly designed contemporary restaurants in the city, Yenn decided to swerve and go out on a limb. “I just wanted something that has a bit more character,” she says. “I wanted something that would be really rich in personality. We wanted to go outside our comfort zone.” With Julien already part of the squad, she needed someone to translate the culinary verve into an outstanding aesthetic to match.
Enter long-time friend André Fu, one of the city’s most prominent architects and designers. The last time they worked together on a hospitality project, they were both in the very early stages of their careers, when a 20-something Yenn opened the JIA Hotel in Causeway Bay in 2005. So this new project was a special one, and the opening of Louise is a significant milestone in their friendship and working relationship. “It’s nice when you get to work with people that you have collaborated with a long while back,” says André. “Life evolves and careers progress, and then you get the opportunity to work again on something on a different level. This was a chance for me to communicate in a different kind of language.”
Entering into André’s vision of Louise, you become part of a story that unravels seductively, layer by layer. The visual identity of the restaurant is rich with lush greenery,
tactile textures and eclectic artworks—mostly curated by art aficionado Alan Lo, Yenn’s husband—all working together to create the sense of a lived-in, glamorous boudoir—home of the fictional Louise, a character conceived by the team and named for Julien’s paternal grandmother, Jean-louise (beautiful symmetry, as Odette was inspired by the name of his maternal grandmother).
“It’s not just the palette or the patterns that create that feeling,” explains André. “It’s more how people move in the space, how they walk and what they see when they arrive.” He gestures to the heavy emerald curtains between the entrance and the lounge. “It’s the feeling that you’re unveiling something, that you’re going into the private world of this persona. All of that scenography adds up, layer by layer, to create that Louise experience.”
The two-storey restaurant offers a two-tone journey. The ground floor is a casual, all-day lounge resplendent with terrazzo tables, terracotta flooring and a tropical mural surprising guests at the back, while the upstairs dining room is aglow with warm golden tones, painterly details and a dramatic open kitchen that evokes a theatre.
To bridge the Louise persona and the aesthetic of the space, Yenn enlisted the expertise of Thirty30 Creative, run by husband-and-wife duo Christopher Owen and Victoria Tang- Owen. The studio previously helped Yenn reinterpret the Duddell’s brand in Hong Kong and London. The duo’s acute sense of style and deep understanding of the back story went a long way to bringing Louise to life.
For Christopher, the identity was strong from the beginning and it was a matter of bringing out the details in subtle ways. “A great hostess is basically the idea behind Louise,” he says. “She’s going to be the kind of person who’s writing thank-you notes or writing out invitations by hand. The personality we’re trying to convey is like this cultured hostess who is very welcoming but also quite proper. So there’s an elegance, but there’s also a slight sort of seriousness as well as a playfulness. And that’s supposed to come through in the food you’re eating, with the menus you’re looking at, the interaction with the staff—it all comes together as one personality.”
He points to a subtle detail—his favourite one—of a single, handwritten letter L that appears at the end of the menus, in a light, almost imperceptible grey on the china teapots and teacups, and embroidered on the napkins. “One little letter sign-off is enough and it indicates who it is from, who it is to. The signature is just more personal, more relaxed, intimate and understated.”
From conception to the grand opening, Louise has been brought to life in just a year. After Julien’s services were secured in late 2018, the rest of the team was confirmed only earlier this year. “Everyone’s put in their time to do this,” says Yenn, still reeling from the fast pace of the project. “That’s why, to me, it’s fantastic. Despite the tight timeline, I think this whole process was very smooth because everybody just knew the direction we were going for.”
With all bases covered, Louise has settled into the city’s culinary scene with a relaxed confidence befitting its imaginary namesake. For Yenn, it’s a testament to the power of teamwork—where creative minds from so many different industries can unite over a shared vision for a quality, unintimidating restaurant that can push the boundaries of hospitality. “I think everyone really put their heart into it and that really made a big difference,” she says. André agrees. “The beauty is when everybody syncs,” he says. “You have to trust that the party will deliver something that’s right. And then it just naturally flows.”