French chef Olivier Elzer has so much to say about his new Hong Kong restaurant Clarence, at H Code in the Central business district, that he shows his first visitors every nook and cranny of the space that seats under 100 diners. On the 25th floor of the building in Pottinger Street, Clarence overlooks the Tai Kwun heritage and arts centre to the south, while if you look north you can see Kowloon in the distance. Everything about Clarence entails a lot of explanations. First, the name. The restaurant is wine focused and the second he has opened after L’Envol , and is named after Le Clarence de Haut-Brion, the second winery of Chateau Haut-Brion, a wine producer in the Bordeaux region of France known for its dry white wines. There is a semi-private dining room that looks similar to a cosy wine cave , with its curved ceiling made of brick and wine bottles displayed on shelves. VIP customers can keep their stash of alcohol in private lockers there. Clarence has a terrace and next to it is a U-shaped wine bar where chefs present smoked and marinated seafood items such as caviar, turbot, Arctic char, and octopus, finished with citrus flavours in front of guests. Customers can eat any main menu item at the bar. French chef in Hong Kong on Alain Ducasse, Joël Robuchon and a love of fish The open kitchen has industrial steamers, teppanyaki hobs and a charcoal grill – Elzer says his concept for Clarence is “Yakifrenchy”, though he hastens to add he is not a trained Japanese yakitori chef. It will offer ingredients familiar in French cuisine, such as frog’s leg , Brittany mussels, chestnuts wrapped in bacon, and snails, finished with simple sauces and served on skewers. Elzer, who has worked in Hong Kong for 13 years, says he didn’t want to open another bistro or brasserie like his previous restaurant Seasons by Olivier Elzer, but wanted to find a way to present a lighter version of French food. He looked to his mentor, master chef Joël Robuchon for inspiration. “What he did in 2003, I am actually pushing it even further [in that] he was the first French chef using teppanyaki in a French restaurant, serving on the sushi counter. But no one actually thought he was going to do Japanese or anything else,” he says. Elzer explains that Robuchon’s L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon concept presents tapas made using French techniques and ingredients and cooked Japanese style on a teppanyaki. “I’m taking that concept forward to make ‘Yakifrenchy’, where we cook French classics on the grill and pair each bite with a sauce. It’s fun, nice and tastes good,” he says. Main course dishes include charcoal-grilled duck, chicken, pork and whole baby lamb and skate wing prepared teppanyaki style. Helming the kitchen will be 37-year-old Simon So Wai-man, who has worked with Elzer since the Frenchman arrived in Hong Kong, first at French chef Pierre Gagnaire’s eponymous restaurant in the Mandarin Oriental, and then at L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon, Seasons, and L’Envol. “He taught me a lot of things so I wanted to follow him. I appreciate that he thinks of this kind of concept that we locals would never think of,” says So, who began working in Italian restaurants when he was around 13 years old. “He has a wider picture of things, [and] more experience with ingredients to create this new concept which I like.” It seems Elzer’s main aim is to create a restaurant brand that is not about the chef. “La Petite Maison in Dubai, London, Paris, no one knows who is the chef and everyone loves it, there’s a nice ambience and they have a very nice menu. And you can see that it’s working,” he says. A great experience, a new restaurant and new concepts, nice wine, and some fun … I think I owe this to my own customer Olivier Elzer, founder of Clarence restaurant “There will be more than one Clarence … My idea is to sell this concept to hotels, or to owners who are interested overseas. I’ve already talked with people in Taiwan, but I am the one who is slowing them down because I want to run this one first and see how it works,” he says. All the recipes must be standardised for consistency. Prices per person will be HK$400 (US$50) to HK$600 for lunch and HK$1,000 to HK$1,200 for dinner. Elzer admits opening Clarence in the middle of the fifth wave of the coronavirus pandemic in Hong Kong that has seen cases rise by the thousands each day is only possible because he got a good deal on the rent; he has signed a six-year lease. “The fifth wave is going to be painful, but in one to two months it will be less stressed. In France there are 150,000 cases a day, same as Japan which will open soon to foreigners,” Elzer says. (Since the Post spoke to Elzer, daily new cases in France have dropped to an average of less than 88,000, and in Japan to around 78,000.) “I will tell you it was not easy to open in a pandemic, but right now the only joy that people can have in Hong Kong is having a great experience, a new restaurant and new concepts, nice wine, and some fun. And I think I owe this to my own customer.” Clarence: 25/F, H Code, 45 Pottinger Street, Central, tel: 3568 1397