Hennessy

On the public record, my work with Hennessy begins earlier than my work with Krug. It starts in autumn 2014, when the maison brought its Hennessy X.O Appreciation Grows, In Good Company series to Kuala Lumpur from 30 September to 4 October. There were five evenings, two chefs and one cognac. The Ambassade came two years later; the Salon at Enfin, the first Hennessy Salon anywhere in the world, three years later.

Appreciation Grows, Kuala Lumpur, autumn 2014

I was paired with Chef Accursio Craparo, a one-Michelin-star chef and owner of Accursio Ristorante in Sciacca, Sicily, who earned his first star in 2008. Prestige’s September 2014 preview noted that this was the first time the Appreciation Grows series had put two chefs at one event. Audrey Wong wrote the feature in the Indulgence section, pages 210 to 211. China Press ran the preview (15 August 2014) and the advertorial (30 August 2014) in Chinese, under the In Good Company (好伴同行) title. The Star’s report after the event, on 8 November 2014, gave the evening its headline, Two Chefs and a Famous Cognac Create a Cuisine for Gourmands. It put me next to European Michelin company at the very start of my work 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

Each of the five evenings served a set pairing menu with Hennessy X.O. These plates were photographed for the maison’s record.

Six months later, in summer 2015, Malaysia’s launch of the Hennessy 250 Collector Blend, the maison’s commemorative blend for 250 years of the house, took place at Brasserie Enfin with a tasting and pairing dinner. Brasserie Enfin was the maison’s Malaysian launch venue from June to July 2015. Isaac Tan and FoodMsia covered the evening. FoodMsia wrote of “aromatic tones ranging from herbal […] balance of subtlety and complexity”, and that is still how I cook with Hennessy: subtle first, with the complexity kept in check.

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

A blend made to mark 250 years needed food with the same depth. These are the six courses from the Malaysian launch, the signature plate first and the other five in the carousel below.

This was two years before the formal Ambassade, and three before the Salon.

Malaysia’s first Hennessy Ambassador, 2016

In November 2016 Sin Chew Daily ran Hennessy XO 荣誉呈献·2016 年极致赏宴之旅, which named me Malaysia’s first Hennessy Ambassador, in the same year as the Krug distinction. The same piece covered my work with Chef Nurdin Topham, founder of the Michelin-starred Nur in Hong Kong, whose background included Raymond Blanc and the Nordic Food Lab that René Redzepi of Noma set up.

The ambassadorship gave the work its formal title. What came later that year set it apart.

The Hennessy Salon at Enfin, the world’s first

The Hennessy Salon is the maison’s highest dining honour. It recognises cooking and service together, and Hennessy gives it to one restaurant at a time, anywhere in the world.

In 2016, Enfin by James Won at Menara Hap Seng became the world’s first Hennessy Salon. The Edge Options confirmed it on 7 November 2016 (“the world’s first Hennessy salon”). Star2 and The Star Online reported 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 seated ten guests at one private table. Floor-to-ceiling glass looked down over Jalan P Ramlee. There was a cellar of Hennessy cognacs going back to the 1930s, with bespoke wood panelling and shelves to show the bottles. It sat on the upper level of Enfin, up the spiral staircase, in the same building as my Krug Ambassade work.

Enfin kept the Salon for as long as it was open. When Enfin closed, the world’s first Hennessy Salon of its time closed with it, and became part of the record.

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

In late 2016, Hennessy X.O Appreciation Grows became the Hennessy Odyssey at Enfin. At its centre was a Sabah menu, Land Below the Wind, cooked mostly with Sabah ingredients to bring out Hennessy X.O’s seven tasting notes, which the maison calls its seven chapters. Nurdin Topham and I wrote the menu together. My foraging and fermentation work met the cognac’s seven chapters on the same plates.

The Odyssey ran in two parts: invitation-only dinners from 31 October to 5 November 2016, then public bookings from 7 to 30 November 2016 at RM 999 per person. Star2 and The Star Online (Suzanne Lazaroo, 29 October 2016) and The Edge Options (7 November 2016) are the primary sources.

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 first course set the tone. It looked like an egg, scented with torch ginger flower and citrus, but it was almond milk, served with naturally briny oyster leaf and ice plant. The food stood as food, and the cognac met it there. The carousel below shows the seven-course Odyssey menu in eight frames; scroll sideways to see them.

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

The most photographed part of my Hennessy years was the collaboration with Tapestry Malaysia: a run of six-senses dinners at Enfin, Menara Hap Seng, where the cognac, my degustation menus and Tapestry Malaysia’s sensory design shared the evening.

Robb Report Malaysia ran Hennessy × Chef James Won × Tapestry Malaysia Weave Together Immersive Dining Experience, describing lobster bisque with ice plant under glowing digital fireflies, and the peg of Hennessy X.O. that Prestige Online (Indonesia) picked out as the evening’s signature. The Edge Options covered Hennessy, Enfin and Tapestry Malaysia together. The lifestyle blogger Ivy Aiwei wrote at length about the six senses experience at Menara Hap Seng in August 2018.

In its way, it was the closest the Enfin years came to dinner as theatre.

BURO 24/7’s A Culinary Odyssey with Hennessy X.O at Enfin covered the maison’s Vinyl-Powered dinner at Enfin, which ran alongside the Tapestry series. The cognac, the music and my degustation menu came together in one evening. BURO’s phrase was “styles in one epicurean adventure”. It was one of the more cross-disciplinary nights of my Hennessy years, and it foreshadowed the music-pairing tradition that later grew into the Krug Music Pairing.

H-Gourmet Vietnam: Saigon, May 2018

In May 2018 the Hennessy work went abroad. H-Gourmet took my Hennessy X.O cooking to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) for a press conference and gourmet dinner: French technique with Vietnamese ingredients. The maison’s line for the evening was “Vietnam sở hữu nguồn nguyên liệu đáng tự hào”, Vietnam has ingredients to be proud of.

Nine Vietnamese press articles covered the Saigon evening: 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 placement in Sunflower (Tiếp thị & Gia đình). The KOL with the highest engagement was Hannah Nguyen.

Saigon took the work beyond Malaysia. My Hennessy years run from Kuala Lumpur (2014, 2015, 2016) to Saigon (2018) and on from there: a regional partnership in cultural diplomacy that lasted four years without a break.

The Malaysian counterpart

Hennessy looks after its own brand and standing from Cognac, in France, and the maison itself confers the Ambassade and the Salon. In Malaysia my work goes through Moët Hennessy Diageo Malaysia, the regional sales-management partner, and the relationship has grown year by year. Krug, Hennessy and the rest of the Moët Hennessy portfolio share one Malaysian team, though each maison runs its own brand, programmes and honours.

What stayed

There is no second act with Hennessy now. The Salon was the high point, and Enfin was its room. What I keep is a principle. Cognac earns its place at the table through good food, good company and the right measure. Pairing notes alone do not earn it.

In 2025 I moved from running restaurants to conservation and culinary diplomacy, and the Hennessy habits came with me. A Salon asks a lot of a kitchen, and that stays with you after the room closes.

In moving image

The Hennessy films fall into two groups: 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 are in the roll below. Scroll sideways to watch them.

Films commissioned by Moët Hennessy Diageo for Maison Hennessy and Tapestry Malaysia.

The archive

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

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

Photographs

Films