Meet the five Odette chefs who helped Julien Royer achieve Michelin success
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Meet the five Odette chefs who helped Julien Royer achieve Michelin success
In celebration of the eating place's fifth ceremony, chef-owner Royer wants his well-loved squad to accept the spotlight. In return, they share how his mentorship has impacted them.
The Odette dream team: Chefs Jonathan Gan, Louisa Lim, Adam Wan, Julien Royer, Levin Lau and Yeo Sheng Xiong. (Photo: Joyee Koo)
20 Nov 2022 06:30AM (Updated: 09 Jul 2022 xi:09PM)
How do you define a restaurant's success in this twenty-four hour period and age? For chef Julien Royer of three-Michelin-starred Odette, information technology's a kitchen that runs faultlessly even when he isn't around.
This month, as the eatery named in tribute to his grandmother celebrates its anniversary, he's confident that he's achieved this. Five years in, Royer has built what is perhaps his strongest team yet – some members, such as executive chef Levin Lau, chef de cuisine Adam Wan and sous chef Yeo Sheng Xiong, have worked with him for a decade.
"We have grown together. They accept become more than staff members to me," he said. And, "Nowadays, I can take a day off or go on holiday and take no worries because I know the eating house volition exist running very well and the standard will be the same every bit whether I'm hither or not. I call up this is truly the success of what a eating place is in 2020, because you can't exist here always."
Then this year, in light of the pandemic putting a damper on collaborations with other feted restaurants effectually the world, he's come upwardly with a dissimilar idea for celebrating the anniversary of the eatery at the top spot of 2020'due south Asia's 50 Best Restaurants list.
"I told myself, 'Why don't we do it with our own petty stars here?'"
In a three-day event named Marchands de Bonheur – "Merchants of happiness" – held from Nov 20 to 22, five of Royer'southward chefs will have the laissez passer, presenting their own dishes created with the chef-owner's guidance.
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"All of them have great talent, and all of them are the backbone of what nosotros do on a daily footing. And without those people, in that location would be no restaurant, no story, no success. So, it'due south a style to reward them, make them smooth and push button their creativity," he said.
In fashioning the bill of fare for the anniversary dinner, each of the five chefs got to option an ingredient that is currently in season, and arts and crafts a dish celebrating information technology.
Royer himself will besides serve two of his signatures: The dove, a dish that has evolved via different permutations over the years, each more delicious than the last; and the langoustine, his favourite seafood, cooked very gently to highlight its natural sweetness.
The chefs accept "been working on the dishes for the last few weeks, testing and refining and working equally a squad," Royer said. "This is the beautiful affair about it – solitary, you tin't practice much, but when you are surrounded past slap-up people like they are, you can."
Who are the people who make up the heart and soul of Odette, and how do their dishes illustrate their journey with the restaurant? We got to know these talented chefs, ascent culinary stars and purveyors of gustatory pleasure.
EXECUTIVE CHEF LEVIN LAU
Having been role of Royer's team since 2007, Lau, whose father ran a market place vegetable stall, knows all the ins and outs of kitchen management.
Even though he'southward the stiff, silent type, he isn't without a humor. For the anniversary dinner, the 35-year-old is presenting a playful tribute to Odette'south longstanding signature uni dish.
Instead of serving it in its shell, he'll serve Hokkaido uni in a spiked glass bowl instead, with Osaka sardine tartare smoked with scarlet woods for some unctuous fattiness, and finger lime that'due south besides from Japan. It'south topped with uni-infused mussel cream and Kristal caviar. "There'south a twist on the season, but the dish looks about the same," he explained.
The creation is inspired by his appreciation for Japanese ingredients and their provenance, a passion cultivated through trips to Japan with the eating place's suppliers to source for produce also every bit to cook at events there with Royer and the team. "I really respect how they treat their ingredients advisedly, starting with the farmers," he said.
In the thirteen years that he's worked with Royer, Lau has learned to read him so well that he can always tell when his chef has tasted the one thing that'southward particularly offensive to his palate: Dried shrimp. Whenever he detects it in food, "he makes a face", Lau divulged with a laugh.
That, Royer protested, is because Lau loves putting dried shrimp, fish sauce and other pungent Asian elements into his own cooking.
On Lau'southward part, information technology volition forever exist a mystery, he mused, why the French dearest their stinky cheeses but not hae bee and durian.
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CHEF DE CUISINE ADAM WAN
What happens when yous spend more than time with your French chef than with your family unit or friends? Your English language takes on a pronounced French accent, and it's disarmingly unique.
Born in small-town Malaysia, Wan recalls edifice wood fires and visiting moisture markets with his grandmother equally a kid, which motivated his food aspirations.
He has worked with Royer for nearly 10 years at present, and has risen through the ranks to go his right-paw human being in the kitchen, picking upwardly a control of French along the way – which certainly helps in edifice rapport with suppliers.
For his dish, he wanted his French culinary grooming and his Chinese heritage to meet on a plate, while paying homage to one of Odette's signature dishes, the Normandy Brown Crab.
He's chosen to present a dish of Hokkaido king crab served ii means: Cold and hot. At that place is crab meat accompanied by a cucumber-tarragon sorbet and a layer of Riesling and Tosaka seaweed jelly; so Chinese-style crab dumplings in a warm broth. "Dumplings are one of my favourite foods," the 30-twelvemonth-former said.
He has also fabricated sure to incorporate ane of the philosophies he's absorbed from Royer: Respect for ingredients. The dish "uses every unmarried function of the king crab to make sure there'southward no wastage": Broth is fabricated with the shell, and crab trimmings course the dumplings' filling.
It'southward a tribute to the fact that "nosotros cannot cook expert food without the farmers, fishermen and other producers," Wan said.
At the aforementioned time, "This is a actually proficient opportunity to show my Chinese heritage in a French restaurant… I e'er tell myself, 'Never forget where you come from.'"
SOUS CHEF YEO SHENG XIONG
The name on Yeo's chef's jacket reads "Naka Xiong", but it's actually a nickname that Royer bestowed upon him: "Naka" is how the French chef pronounces the Mandarin conversational filler words "na ge", which Royer says he used to hear Yeo utter all the time.
Yeo, who began his career with Royer at 19, has since embraced it fully – when he travels for work, information technology's easier for chefs in other countries to pronounce than his actual name.
The 29-year-old is obsessed with the seasonality of produce, something that he credits Royer with helping him appreciate.
"The kitchen smells different every season," he said. "Right now, when information technology's in between autumn and wintertime, you start to see cranberries… chestnuts. You see all the root vegetables. I really love celeriac. If I smell celeriac in January, it brings me back to November and December, similar when y'all smell bak kwa at Chinese New year's day."
In a country where we accept no seasons, the 29-year-old has come up quite a long mode from his childhood growing up on his male parent's fish farm in Kranji. He now oversees the restaurant's research and development processes, and mentors other cooks.
However, he laboured over the dish he wanted to present because, he quipped, it's "going to exist served in the restaurant where (Royer'due south) grandmother's proper noun is on the wall".
When the chefs were asked which ingredients they wanted to work with, he was the first to shoot his manus up and "chope" Alba white truffles.
Showcasing the seasonal effeminateness, his dish also features Pu-erh tea-smoked egg, celeriac puree, Vin Jaune-buckwheat sabayon, crisp pancetta and Piedmont hazelnuts.
It's a comforting yet elegant dish that mirrors the stage of maturity he's grown into as a chef.
"I used to exist really angsty and I thought that yelling was the best manner," he said. "But when (Chef Julien) saw me yelling, he would become, 'Calmez-vous', which means 'calm down.'"
JUNIOR SOUS CHEF JONATHAN GAN
Gan is a self-taught cook whose love of Japanese civilization is inscribed on his arms in the class of anime-inspired tattoos and the proverb, "Autumn down seven times, get upwardly eight."
The attention to detail that the Japanese are known for is something he seeks to emulate, then he spends even his days off reading up on culinary methods, learning techniques of butchery and preservation.
Moving from Whitegrass to Odette in 2017, the 27-year-old was keen to learn nigh French cuisine, and Royer'south fashion taught him an appreciation for "light and make clean-tasting flavours".
For the dinner, he'southward presenting a dish of wild turbot from Brittany, one of his favourite fish to work with. He brines it, and then poaches it in French butter, serving it with Jerusalem artichoke puree finished with a mussel beurre blanc.
He makes sure to add that it's "garnished with lemon zest, capers, $.25 of lemon segments and parsley", because he's only recently moved upwardly from the garnish station to existence in charge of proteins.
Non bad at all for a chef who'due south had no formal culinary training and learnt everything on the chore.
PASTRY CHEF LOUISA LIM
You'd think that having defended her life to pastry, she'd exist a fan of all things sugary, but 28-year-old Lim says she actually doesn't capeesh overly sweet desserts.
That'south why her creations are delicate, restrained and never cloying – the perfect catastrophe to a tour de force of a repast.
For the occasion, the Le Cordon Bleu Paris graduate, who trained and worked in France for four years, has spun a creation using chestnuts.
As information technology's autumn and they are in flavor, chestnut mont blancs immediately sprang to listen. She so decided to add a citrus element with Corsican clementines. Along with toasted hazelnut meringue, the end result is a plate that combines "everything I like in a dessert".
In keeping with Odette'southward design aesthetic, "When I'm creating a dessert, I ever acquit in mind the words feminine residuum," she shared.
You could telephone call information technology her personal act of mild rebellion: "I'g 1 of the few girls in the kitchen, and then I prefer to add together a feminine touch," she said.
An surroundings with "a lot of male energy" does "get daunting sometimes", she said. But, "I always tell myself to stay focused and take pride in whatever I practise."
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Odette is at 1 St Andrew's Road #01-04.
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