Hennessy

My chapter with Hennessy begins earlier than the Krug chapter on the public record — in autumn 2014, when the maison's Hennessy X.O Appreciation Grows — In Good Company series came to Kuala Lumpur from 30 September to 4 October. Five evenings, two co-chefs, one cognac. Two years before the Ambassade was confirmed; three years before the Salon at Enfin became the maison's first Hennessy Salon anywhere in the world.

Appreciation Grows — Kuala Lumpur, autumn 2014

I was paired with Chef Accursio Craparo — one-Michelin-star, owner of Accursio Ristorante in Sciacca, Sicily; first star earned 2008 — in what Prestige’s September 2014 preview noted was the first time the Appreciation Grows series had featured two chefs at one event. Audrey Wong carried the feature in the Indulgence section, pages 210–211; China Press carried both the preview (15 August 2014) and the advertorial (30 August 2014) in Chinese-language press, surfacing the In Good Company (好伴同行) frame. The Star’s post-event coverage on 8 November 2014 carried the chapter’s defining line — Two Chefs and a Famous Cognac Create a Cuisine for Gourmands — which placed me alongside European Michelin company at the very beginning of my public chapter with the maison.

We’re both from different backgrounds but we’re able to communicate through the language of food.

Accursio Craparo · Prestige Malaysia (Audrey Wong), September 2014

In Good Company 2014 — the plates

The five evenings ran a curated pairing menu against Hennessy X.O. The work below was photographed for the maison record.

Six months later, in summer 2015, the Hennessy 250 Collector Blend — the maison’s commemorative blend marking 250 years of the house — was launched in Malaysia at Brasserie Enfin with a tasting and pairing dinner. Brasserie Enfin was the maison’s Malaysian launch venue, June – July 2015. Isaac Tan and FoodMsia covered the evening; FoodMsia’s framing — aromatic tones ranging from herbal […] balance of subtlety and complexity — captured the way I have worked with Hennessy ever since. Subtlety as the operating principle, complexity carried with restraint.

Hennessy 250 Anniversary — the launch table at Brasserie Enfin (June 2015)

The 250-year commemorative blend asked for cuisine that read at the same depth. Six courses below — the table at the Malaysian launch. The signature plate first; five supporting courses in the carousel beneath.

Two years before the formal Ambassade. Three years before the Salon.

Malaysia’s first Hennessy Ambassador, 2016

Sin Chew Daily’s November 2016 feature — Hennessy XO 荣誉呈献·2016 年极致赏宴之旅 — named me Malaysia’s first Hennessy Ambassador, alongside the parallel Krug distinction announced the same year. The Ambassador piece recorded a parallel collaboration with Chef Nurdin Topham, founder of Michelin-starred Nur in Hong Kong, whose pedigree included Raymond Blanc and the Nordic Food Lab set up by Noma’s René Redzepi.

The Ambassade was the formal frame. What followed in the same year placed the relationship into a category of its own.

The Hennessy Salon at Enfin — the world’s first

The Hennessy Salon is the maison’s most prestigious dining accolade — a single recognised distinction combining culinary artistry and exceptional service, awarded by Hennessy to a single restaurant at a time anywhere in the world.

In 2016, Enfin by James Won (Menara Hap Seng) became the world’s first Hennessy Salon. The Edge Options carried the confirmation on 7 November 2016 (“the world’s first Hennessy salon”), and Star2 / The Star Online carried it on 29 October 2016 in Suzanne Lazaroo’s piece (“James Won is the owner of Enfin by James Won, which features the world’s first Hennessy Salon, a private space with an amazing vertical library of the precious Cognac”).

The Salon held ten guests at its private table. Bird’s-eye view of Jalan P Ramlee through floor-to-ceiling glass; cellar of Hennessy Cognacs dating to the 1930s; bespoke wood panelling and shelved cognac display. Surfaced at the upper level of Enfin’s spiral-staircase architecture, alongside the Krug Ambassade work in the same building.

The distinction stood through Enfin’s operation. At closure, the world’s first Hennessy Salon at the time of its operation passed into the historical record.

The Hennessy Odyssey — Sabah, Land Below the Wind (2016)

In late 2016, Hennessy X.O Appreciation Grows evolved into the Hennessy Odyssey at Enfin. The chapter’s centre was a Sabah-themed menu — Land Below the Wind — using ingredients predominantly from Sabah to highlight Hennessy X.O’s seven tasting notes / seven chapters. Co-chef Nurdin Topham developed the menu with me; my foraging-and-fermentation work and Hennessy’s seven-chapter cognac architecture met across the same plates.

The Odyssey ran in two phases: invitation-only dinners from 31 October to 5 November 2016, then public availability from 7 to 30 November 2016 at RM 999 per person. Star2 / The Star Online (Suzanne Lazaroo, 29 October 2016) and The Edge Options (7 November 2016) carried the chapter as primary source.

With this new platform, we are looking at breaking rules, changing structure. The emphasis on local ingredients is a huge difference. Hennessy X.O works well with Asian cuisine, and local herbs and spices bring out previously hidden dimensions in it.

James Won · Star2 (Suzanne Lazaroo), 29 October 2016

The opening course set the chapter’s tone: an “egg” infused with torch ginger flower and citrus — actually almond milk — served with naturally briny oyster leaf and ice plant. The cuisine arrived as cuisine; the cognac met it where it was. The carousel below carries the seven-course Odyssey table — eight frames from the menu, scrolled side-to-side.

Tapestry Malaysia × Hennessy — the six-senses series, 2018

The most photographed chapter of the Hennessy years was the Tapestry Malaysia × Hennessy collaboration — a series of six-senses multi-sensory dinners staged at Enfin (Menara Hap Seng), pairing the cognac with my degustation discipline and Tapestry Malaysia’s six-senses dining design.

Robb Report Malaysia carried Hennessy × Chef James Won × Tapestry Malaysia Weave Together Immersive Dining Experience — recording lobster bisque with ice plant under glowing digital fireflies, and the peg of Hennessy X.O. that Prestige Online (Indonesia) named as the chapter’s signature. The Edge Options carried the Hennessy × Enfin × Tapestry Malaysia coverage. Lifestyle blogger Ivy Aiwei recorded the August 2018 chapter at Menara Hap Seng — the six senses experience — at length.

It was, in its own way, the closest the Enfin years came to dining as theatre.

BURO 24/7’s A Culinary Odyssey with Hennessy X.O at Enfin recorded the maison’s Vinyl-Powered dining concept at Enfin alongside the Tapestry series — an evening where the cognac, the music programme, and my degustation discipline carried together. The framing — “styles in one epicurean adventure” — captures one of the more cross-disciplinary evenings in the entire Hennessy chapter, and prefigures the music-pairing tradition that would later mature into the Krug Music Pairing.

H-Gourmet Vietnam — Saigon, May 2018

In May 2018, the Hennessy chapter travelled. H-Gourmet brought my Hennessy X.O work to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) — a press-conference and gourmet-dinner programme staging French culinary technique against Vietnamese ingredients, anchored by the maison’s frame for the evening: “Vietnam sở hữu nguồn nguyên liệu đáng tự hào” — Vietnam possesses a source of ingredients to be proud of.

The Saigon evening was carried by nine Vietnamese press articles — Elle Man Vietnam (print and online); The Thao Van Hoa & Dan Ong; Harper’s Bazaar Vietnam; Esquire Vietnam; Doanh Nhân Saigon; Party In Saigon; and an earned online PR placement at Sunflower (Tiếp thị & Gia đình). Top-engagement KOL: Hannah Nguyen.

H-Gourmet placed the chapter on a multi-jurisdictional record. My Hennessy work spans Kuala Lumpur (2014, 2015, 2016) → Saigon (2018) → onwards — not a Malaysia-only relationship, but a continuous regional cultural-diplomacy partnership across four years.

The Malaysian counterpart

Hennessy stewards its own brand and cultural standing from Cognac, France; the Ambassade and Salon are conferred by the maison itself. In Malaysia, my work has been carried in market by Moët Hennessy Diageo Malaysia — the regional sales-management partner through whom the relationship has matured year after year. Krug, Hennessy, and the wider Moët Hennessy portfolio share the same Malaysian counterpart team in market, though each maison stewards its own brand, programmes, and recognitions independently.

What stayed

The Hennessy chapter does not have an active second act — the Salon was the apex, and Enfin was its room. What carries forward is the principle: cognac as the ingredient that earns its place at the table not through pairing notes but through proper dining, in proper company, at proper proportion.

When I turned the work in 2025 from operating restaurants to conservation and culinary diplomacy, the Hennessy practice travelled with me. The discipline a Salon imposes on a kitchen does not leave the work when the room closes.

In moving image

The Hennessy chapter sits across two distinct moving-image bodies of work — the Hennessy XO Odyssey series (2016, with Chef Nurdin Topham, Land Below the Wind in Sabah), and the Tapestry × Hennessy six-senses series (2018, the evenings at Enfin). All seven films sit here in one roll. Scroll horizontally to walk through them.

Films commissioned by Moët Hennessy Diageo on behalf of Maison Hennessy and Tapestry Malaysia.

The Archive

A decade with Hennessy, gathered — for inspiration, for the record. Every photograph from twelve years and every film from the moving-image work, in one place.

Open the archive A decade gathered — 20 photographs, 7 films

Photographs

Films