Back for Seconds: Four Award-Winning Chefs and Their Favorite Timepieces
By popular demand, we’re hitting the proverbial buffet for another crack at a few world-acclaimed chefs and their timekeepers of choice
Last month, when we kicked off our discussion on watch collecting within the culinary space, there was an inkling amongst Team Wristcheck that we’d only just begun to whet our collective appetites. Suffice to say - here’s hoping you can stomach just one more terrible culinary pun - horological culture is very much baked into the modern hospitality industry; and no matter how many times we revisit the topic of watch-mad chefs, there’s always going to be another icon or upstart trailblazer whose intertwining passion for food and watches is worth marinating on at some length.
That said, for ‘Part 2’ of our chef-y focus, we’ve opted to broaden up the menu a bit: casting our eye upon fewer celebrities and more personalities working at all corners of the globe. Bon appétit.
Dominique Crenn
Known for her distinctive mop of windswept hair and poetic sensibilities, Crenn is the powerhouse behind her own eponymous, NorCal-based fine diner Atelier Crenn – the only restaurant in North America helmed by a female executive chef, to currently hold three Michelin stars. Originally from Versailles, Crenn has been a culinary force in the Bay Area since the late 2000s; her cooking offering an eloquent reconciliation between the traditional pillars of French cuisine and California’s unending obsession with seasonal, locally sourced produce.
Obsessed by small details and the artistry of ‘drawing’ a great dish, it makes sense why Crenn has the affinity she does for Audemars Piguet. The award-winning chef, author, and entrepreneur is a familiar face in AP’s star-studded cast of ambassadors – a role that dovetails well with her own penchant for watches that have a dynamic, visually lyrical quality. To that end, she’s been spotted wearing everything from a suitably striking 34mm Royal Oak in black ceramic to the axis-defying chronographs of the CODE 11.59 collection – both spot-on choices for one of America’s most original culinary voices in recent years.
Pierrick Boyer
Our first ‘Chef’s Special’ was criminally short on any talk of pâtissiers who are horologically inclined, so what better way to make amends than by including one of Australia’s most decorated pastry whizzes, Mr. Pierrick Boyer? The Normandie transplant settled in Melbourne nearly two decades ago, and since then has played a huge role in shaping the contemporary Aussie appetite for morsels of the baked, flakey variety. In 2017, Gault & Millau (i.e. that other vaunted French restaurant guide that isn’t Michelin) named Boyer their ‘Pastry Chef of the Year’: an accolade he subsequently built upon with the opening of his own storefront, Rêverie Cafe. There, dessert lovers clump together in droves - pulled inexorably by Boyer’s many crowd-pleasing creations like the ‘soft & crunchy’ hazelnut dacquoise or a highly addictive assortment of praline choux pastries.
The fact that Boyer’s mastery is in immaculate, bite-sized pastry certainly doesn’t hurt his passion for watch culture. If anything, it seems to have made him the consummate interlocutor between these two worlds. In Melbourne, he’s been a popular caterer for events held by watchmakers ranging from Girard-Perregaux to Breitling; a reputation that he has further cemented with his own absolutely deadly collection. Like many seasoned collectors, over the years Boyer has dabbled in an eclectic array of timepieces from various and sundry manufactures. Perhaps in deference to a previous life in the UN Peacekeeping forces, he was an early proponent of the Luminor 1950 – in bronze, no less. Nowadays, should you spot Boyer in his element at Rêverie, he’s more likely to be wearing some sort of variation on the superlative Royal Oak. Almost definitionally, that includes enviable suspects such as the 15202 ‘Jumbo’ references in both steel and precious metal; though my personal favorite has to be the ‘Double Balancier’ (Ref. 15407ST) – a bravura display of openworking that also happens to be popular with our very own founder, Austen Chu. Like I said: deadly.
Vicky Cheng
A veteran of the gleaming shrine to fine Gallic cookery that is Restaurant Daniel, Cheng has been the chef and proprietor of VEA since 2016 - a Michelin-starred pier-à-terre high above Hong Kong’s skyline, marrying authentic Chinese ingredients to classic French cooking technique. A favourite amongst well-heeled foodies in Asia, it says a lot that VEA has not one but easily half a dozen ‘signature’ dishes. Preparations like the sea cucumber (a challengingly textural food, here rendered crispy and stuffed with a mousseline of prawn) or yolk-enriched crispy daikon are relentlessly photographed, extolled and devoured - the bedrock upon which Cheng has built his extremely dedicated fan base.
Had Cheng chosen to open his first solo venture in North America (he’s originally from Toronto) there’s every chance he would have ended up a supercar collector. Miniaturisation notwithstanding, the inkling for complex, high-performance mechanisms remains deeply embedded in his watch game. While numerous other chefs at the top of the profession favor the simple, somewhat ubiquitous steel diver, Cheng hits his mise en place wearing a ceramic Royal Oak – specifically, the open-worked version that’s fitted with a double balance wheel. It’s a bold choice that reflects Cheng’s own mindset at VEA: energetic, cosmopolitan, and yet unmistakably borne from tradition.
Richard Ekkebus
Undoubtedly Hong Kong’s favorite (and certainly most high-flying) Dutchman, Ekkebus is the mastermind behind Amber Restaurant – The Landmark Mandarin Oriental’s beloved fine dining destination that has been a citywide institution since 2005. Having garnered widespread acclaim during the previous decade for his whimsical, decadent recipes - think lobster ‘jell-o’ and lollipops of foie gras - Ekkebus is now set firmly in the most fearless phase yet of his career. In 2019, he shuttered Amber so that the award-winning restaurant could undergo a four-month-long ‘renovation’: to all intents and purposes, categorically renouncing many of the elements that had made ‘Amber 1.0’ (as long-time patrons of the restaurant drolly call it) so successful. Now, the emphasis is on a graceful, lighter, more ingredient-led mode of cooking: part-response to the endemic wastage Ekkebus perceives in his industry; and as a challenge to go beyond the cloying diktats of mother sauces, carnivorous protein and dairy.
While Amber’s new menus go big on cutting-edge preparations that eschew butter, meat or gluten, observers in #Watchville might be surprised to note that Ekkebus himself still carries the torch for mechanical watchmaking that is, by all accounts, neo-classical in influence. His affinity for a high-quality chronograph (of traditional styling and size) is well-documented: embodied in the guise of the Blancpain ‘Grande Date’ (Ref. 2885) that functions as a daily wearer. On other occasions, he favors a Chronomat from the early 2000s - an iconic aviation-inspired design that alludes to just how long Ekkebus has been collecting.