The Watchmaker François-Paul Journe Opens a Restaurant

The seaweed-wrapped leek fondant circle, sitting on a beneficiant pour of pea-green wild herb sabayon sauce and topped with yellow and purple flower petals, made for a colourful (and attractive) distinction to the grey November skies seen by way of the arched home windows at F.P. Journe Le Restaurant.

One in all Geneva’s latest gastronomic additions, the restaurant opened formally on Nov. 1. And plenty of acquainted faces on this watch trade city have come by to strive Dominique Gauthier’s menus, created in collaboration with the celebrated impartial watchmaker François-Paul Journe.

The 52-seat restaurant is on the Rue du Rhône, town’s most luxurious procuring road — nestled between Bally and Prada, throughout the highway from Gucci and Versace and a block from Patek Philippe, Richard Mille and Bucherer. Since 2014, Mr. Journe had been the co-owner of two different eating places within the area, though neither carried his title, and the constructing had been closed for the previous 4 years for structural renovations.

Mr. Gauthier mentioned the 2 first met in April, when he was on the lookout for a brand new problem after 30 years at Hôtel Beau-Rivage, a luxurious lodge right here within the metropolis.

“I like watches,” mentioned Mr. Gauthier, who on this explicit day was sporting an Omega Seamaster (Journe’s advertising director mentioned the model will make him a “kitchen proof” timepiece). “And François-Paul is basically into good meals and wine. He has the sensibility and appreciation.”

Mr. Journe, nevertheless, calls himself a passion cook dinner for family and friends. “I’m very a lot beneath Gauthier’s degree,” he mentioned. “However perhaps I’ll cook dinner within the restaurant if anyone is lacking, then I will probably be there to assist out.”

The restaurant serves lunch on Mondays by way of Fridays and dinner, Monday by way of Thursday; it’s closed on weekends. And there’s a small boutique close to the doorway the place company could purchase F.P. Journe-branded delicacies together with olive oil, wine and goodies.

The enterprise is a part of a development amongst luxurious manufacturers — together with Breitling, Gucci and Louis Vuitton — to open eating places. “With the explosive progress in luxurious items, manufacturers are on the lookout for different methods to deliver the model alive, to deliver worth for the shopper,” mentioned Matthias Fuchs, a strategic advertising and branding specialist and an assistant professor on the EHL Hospitality Enterprise Faculty in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Whereas the menus, a minimum of to date, don’t embody horological references, Mr. Journe has positioned some among the many restaurant’s oak wall panels, oak ceilings and red-covered banquettes (all of which date from a 1942 renovation and which Geneva authorities declared underneath heritage safety in 2012).

Some are refined, akin to cutlery with ornament resembling guilloché, or machine-aided hand engraving, which is usually utilized to F.P. Journe dials. And the tables have little plaques bearing the names of legendary watchmakers akin to Abraham-Louis Breguet, Christiaan Huygens and Hans Wilsdorf. (The one dwelling watchmaker included? Mr. Journe, in fact.)

Much less refined references are the watch parts captured within the resin knife handles and the wall decorations, which embody a seventeenth century astronomical clock and framed prints of 12 of the 19 calibers that F.P. Journe, the model, has offered in its 24 years of existence.

Throughout Mr. Journe’s profession, his motto has been “Invenit et Fecit” — Latin for “He invented it and made it.” The menu cowl is debossed with “Invenit et Coxit,” or “He invented it and cooked it.”

However then, as Mr. Gauthier mentioned as he appeared up on the giant F.P. Journe clock on the wall of his gleaming stainless-steel kitchen: “Time in cooking is tremendous essential.”