Nine weeks, then the pivot

Bouchon Enfin opened at Pavilion Kuala Lumpur in late 2020. It was the most casual room in the Enfin family, and the one I built around food my grandmother would recognise. The format was a Lyonnaise bouchon, the family bistro of Lyon's Croix-Rousse, where a meal comes from recipes handed down through a family. I brought that tradition to Kuala Lumpur and set it beside the dishes I grew up on. Contemporary French with Modernist technique at the front of the room; Malaysian makan warmth at the table.

The plan was sound and the room was beautiful. The timing could not have been worse.

Nine weeks after we opened, the Movement Control Order shut the doors. What I did next is what defines the restaurant on the public record. Within a week I had moved the kitchen to the Be Kind programme, cooking and handing out dinner packets to organisations and communities in need across Kuala Lumpur, every week, for as long as the closure lasted.

The room is gone. The example it set is still with me.

The Lyon tradition and my grandmother’s hand

The bouchon began in Lyon’s Croix-Rousse district: a small, family-run bistro serving Lyonnaise specialities at neighbourhood prices. It prizes warmth and plain speaking, and its food comes from a grandmother’s recipe book.

That description fitted me twice. My French training gave me the bouchon’s technique. My grandmother gave me its temperament. Bouchon Enfin was the first room where I let the two sit at the same table.

The Malaysian twist was on the menu itself. There were pork dishes any Malaysian raised around a makan table would know, built on cuts and curing methods I learned in France and seasoned from my grandmother’s shelf. Sarawak heritage rice took the place of arborio. Langit Collective peppercorn took the place of the supermarket grind. Plates came family-style, because that is how my grandmother always served. Prestige Online Malaysia ran my own account of the concept, and UFood / Oriental Daily explained the bouchon tradition to Malaysian readers, and how it differs from a brasserie or a bistro.

It was the most generous space, architecturally, that I had ever run. Contemporary French with Modernist technique at the front of the room, bouchon warmth at the table.

We remain hopeful for 2021 — to be safe and well.

James Won · Prestige Online Malaysia · late 2020

The room: Swofinty Yik Design and Kenji Chai

Swofinty Yik Design, the award-winning Malaysian interior practice, gave the room its shape. My brief was to turn the bouchon’s family warmth into a dining room on Pavilion Level 3. Two years later Swofinty also designed Shin’Labo at Lalaport. That was deliberate: the bouchon showed me what the practice could do, and when the next room needed the same hand, I went back to them.

Kenji Chai painted the mural at the front of house. He is the Malaysian street and graffiti artist whose lions, hornbills and feathered figures appear on walls across the country. I asked him in because the bouchon tradition is plain-spoken and folkloric, and the room needed a Malaysian folk language of today to answer it. The mural stands guard: a lion, a hornbill and a masked figure in a feathered headdress, with the neon be signature that let you find the room from the Pavilion concourse.

Kenji also painted the feathered wings beside the entrance, one feather at a time, onto the grooved wall. Guests walked in beneath them.

Charcuterie: Mr Kuan and the in-house programme

Our signature was the in-house charcuterie, and it belonged to Mr Kuan, my charcuterie expert. He cured, smoked and aged everything on the board: smoked ham, smoked bacon, cured loins, pâté en croûte. A bouchon is a charcuterie house before it is anything else. In Kuala Lumpur there was no supplier working at the level I wanted, so we built the programme ourselves.

His ham and bacon ran right through the menu. The carbonara used his bacon and the fried rice used his ham. The donabe rice pots, made with dark Sarawak heritage rice, were finished with smoked pork belly that had spent three weeks in his cure. In practice the kitchen ran to his curing calendar, and we wrote the menu around it.

The pork chop was the centre of the room. Cut on the bone, dry-rubbed, aged in Mr Kuan’s cabinet and finished over fire, it came with a tabbouleh chimichurri, crisp pork-rind fingers and a fruit chutney to cut the fat. A Lyonnaise plate, seasoned the way my grandmother would have done it.

The glazed pork belly was the most plainly Malaysian thing we served. A clean square of belly, lacquered in dark soy and honey, read as char siu to half the room and as laquage to the other half. Sesame green beans on the side. Shoestring fries, because every bouchon serves something with frites.

The parfait was on every starter board. Chicken liver worked smooth as silk, sealed under a clear layer of port-wine jelly that gave way as soon as the toast went in.

Sourcing: Langit Collective and the East Malaysian heirlooms

Our sourcing started with Langit Collective, the Malaysian social enterprise that works with smallholder farmers in East Malaysia and brings their heirloom produce to market at a fair return. We chose them on purpose. The rice was theirs, and so was the peppercorn. The golden coral snails, a rare highland variety farmed by Sarawak smallholders, also came through them, onto a Lyonnaise plate that would normally have called for Burgundian escargot.

Heritage rice over arborio, Langit peppercorn over a generic grind, golden coral snails over escargot: those choices were about telling the truth on the plate, about where I was cooking and for whom. A Lyonnaise bouchon in Kuala Lumpur, supplied from East Malaysia, run by a chef whose grandmother taught him how to read a market.

We made a Lyonnaise risotto, slowly, with Langit’s heritage rice. The long, dark grain finishes earthier than arborio, and it took the green of fresh parsley the way paper takes ink. Puffed pork rind on top for crunch. On the plate, it made the case that Sarawak rice belongs in a French repertoire just as it belongs in a Sarawakian one.

The plates

Every bouchon starts the same way: bread on the board, cultured butter beside it, no fuss. We baked our loaves in-house and toasted them to order, so the crust picked up a little bitterness from the grill. The butter was salted, soft and generous. If a guest said no to the bread, they had not really sat down yet.

Through the cooler month we cooked a cellar braise: chicken in red wine with button mushrooms and carrot, and garlic toast on the side. This was the bouchon at its most direct. Nothing piled on top, nothing built up in the bowl. Just a long braise, a slice of toast, and chicken that had taken on the colour of its own sauce.

No bouchon kitchen gets away without steak frites. We cooked it properly: rested, sliced, finished in cast iron with rosemary, with béarnaise in a small dish and frites beside it. It came to the table without a word of explanation, which is how it should be.

The whole roast chicken was the other dish for the middle of the table, brought out whole to share. The Malaysian touch was in the small bowl beside it: a chilli condiment my grandmother would have known, where a Lyonnaise table might expect gravy. Bok choy for something green. Shared, again, because that is how we built the menu.

The pork burger was the casual end of the menu: Mr Kuan’s bacon, melted cheese, brioche and a cone of fries. A bouchon gives it the same care it gives the coq au vin. Same cook, same standard.

Every plate was made for sharing, because that is how Malaysians eat together. People came for yum cha, for birthdays, for the end of a long week in town. What I love about the bouchon is that it keeps the casual and the careful in one kitchen, cooked to one standard.

The drinks programme

The drinks followed the food. There was a wide gin selection with London Essence Tonic, classic and signature cocktails from the bar, a working wine list with French, Old World and a small Malaysian section, and champagne by the glass for any table that wanted it. We kept the list broad on purpose. At a bouchon the guest decides at the table what kind of evening it is going to be, and the drinks had to meet them there.

Featured launch film

Quick and Easy with Bouchon Enfin

A short home-cooking series: three dishes our guests loved, in a form a home kitchen can manage.

· twenty-five seconds, Pavilion KL, late 2020.