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

- Charmaine Mok

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.