This the Season For Reinvention
at Seasons by Olivier E at Lee Gardens
Seasons by Michelin-starred Executive Chef and Co-Founder Olivier Elzer is the latest modern French restaurant to hit Hong Kong, but this one comes with the gift of mother nature and a whole lot of culinary innovation.
Opened in late June at Lee Gardens, Causeway Bay, Seasons by Olivier E is the stunning all-natural restaurant hosted by and named after three-Michelin-starred Executive Chef Olivier Elzer. Serving innovative new visions of French cuisine in a lavish manor-like setting, all of which is inspired by the passing of the seasons, every aspect of the restaurant, from its interior design to the composition, ingredients and style of dishes, is a love letter to one of nature’s four seasons and a testimony to the chef’s deserved stars.
A Taste for Reinvention
Chef Olivier is a firm believer in continually reinventing, perfecting and innovating his cuisine with fresh ideas, tasty surprises and unlikely flavour combinations. Indeed there are classic French flavours and the chef understands that cooking traditions should be upheld where possible, but these culinary conventions might come crowned with Oriental influences, they might be tweaked with innovative twists for which the award-winning chef is renowned, or they might even represent a piece of his own memories in France – but most importantly, each dish is a celebration of a season.
Take the chef’s French pink radish for instance. This simple and stylish dish is a twist on a perennial French favourite. A crisp, refreshing radish from Loire is enrobed in a homemade garlic and parsley butter, then plunged into crushed ice especially for summer. A pinch of gourmet Guerande salt is then sprinkled on top to punctuate the flavour and round off each bite.
Then there’s Season’s chilled tamarillo gazpacho with a basil ice cream and brousse cheese. Tomato is typically the key ingredient to this famous chilled soup, but at Seasons, things get creative with Tamarillo from South America as the base. This is then ground together with bell peppers, ripened tomatoes, garlic, olive oil and herbs to form a gazpacho with a distinctly purplish hue and a rich, fleshy texture. Floating on the gazpacho, a scoop of brousse cheese lends a rich creaminess to the dish, while somewhere in between, a layer of basil ice cream balances out this fresh and cooling creation.
Perhaps the quintessential icon of French cuisine though, is frogs legs. At Seasons, they honour the famous traditions of this French delicacy with a crunchy, fried coating, but alongside the tender morsels is a fragrant poulette sauce of chicken, frog meat, white wine and shallots, topped off with a fresh watercress foam – an innovative finishing touch from Chef Olivier.
The frog’s legs have already become a favourite for Season’s curious new diners, but the true standout dish for us is the chef’s signature – the grilled Holstein ribeye with shallots cooked in a red wine sauce. The prime grass-fed beef is crowned by a rich shallot and Chambertin red wine compote with a hint of blackcurrant. It is then topped with deep-fried garlic chips that add a fantastic crunch to each bite.
The generous grilled cut sits upon a wooden slab surrounded by twigs of the very Burgundy vine from which the red wine compote’s grapes came. The whole ensemble is then placed within a wine box fashioned from the wood of the case and, for added wow, the twigs are set alight.Upon opening the mystery box, impressive aromatic plumes set the outstanding flavours in motion with the steak’s juiciness infused within the smoky smoulder.
A French feast would never be complete without a flawless dessert, so for the summer season, Chef Olivier has created his strawberry jelly with mascarpone cream and a raspberry sorbet. This seasonal dish uses gariguette strawberries specially selected from France for their distinctive shape and flavour and frozen to enhance their taste intensity. They are then braised for 2 hours until soft and condensed, before Chef Olivier extracts the juice and blends it with a hibiscus syrup to create an intense strawberry jelly. It comes placed on a morsel of meringue and topped with a measure of rich mascarpone cream – sweet, smooth and stunningly presented.
Explore the Seasons…
Just like Chef Olivier’s cuisine, the design of the restaurant is inspired by the passing of the seasons – spring’s blooms, summer’s festivities, the autumn harvest and winter’s feasts. The restaurant feels at once gloriously natural and yet classic and sophisticated, which brings a friendly feel to the fine dining vibe.
The Dining Room forms the main area of the restaurant and it bursts with the richness of autumn, with warming hues of orange, brown and little splashes of turquoise. Here, the bar-like Chef ‘s Table looks into the open kitchen for guests to interact with the chefs over their magnificent harvest banquets.
Alongside, the VIP Private Room is lavished in bright wintery colours to emphasise the elegant and luxurious ambience, while the Green House, a stunning glass canopy traversing the hallway, ignites the area with natural light and nature to capture the beauty of spring. And last but certainly not least, the joy of summer is celebrated on the outdoor Garden Terrace; a vast expanse in the open air for cocktail parties or pre-dinner aperitifs.
Meet the Chef
Co-founder and Executive Chef Olivier Elzer is a true perfectionist. To him, perfection is fleeting as another layer of refinement is always hiding beneath, waiting to be discovered. This dedication to continually reinvent, refine and redefine perfection is the chef’s key philosophy at Seasons, and through a career that traverses the world’s finest kitchens, it is an ideal that he has maintained over the years.
The 35-year-old French chef hails from renowned gourmet roots. His grandfather was once chef to the last Tsar of Russia which served as Chef Olivier’s inspiration to master the delicate art of food. After seeking mentorship from French culinary luminaries, Joël Robuchon and Pierre Gagnaire, Chef Olivier further developed his career in several French and Hong Kong Michelin-starred restaurants and, in 2007, he was named amongst France’s 22 best young chefs by Gault Millau.
In 2009, this Michelin-starred chef then headed to Hong Kong to discover a new culinary frontier. His experiences in the East led him to re-think and re-interpret classical French cuisine and, during his time with the Hong Kong Mandarin Oriental’s Pierre Restaurant and L’ Atelier de Joël Robuchon where he acted as Executive Chef and Chef de Cuisine, he led these two fine dining establishments to earn 2 and 3 Michelin Stars respectively in 2010 and 2012. It is now in 2014 that Chef Olivier marks his fifth anniversary in Hong Kong, and so, Seasons was his way of marking this notable milestone.
