An evening with Bertrand Bourgeois of Manufacture Janvier

The village of St. Croix sits at an elevation of about 1,000 meters in the Jura region of Switzerland, and it is here that in an unprepossessing building, Manufacture Janvier produces about ten Vianney Halter watches a year.

Known as the man who introduced steampunk to high end watches, his watches not only have a very distinctive aesthetic, but also a very strong ability to evoke a sense of that genre, bring whimsy to "haute hologerie". The style may not be to everyone's tastes, but they are to mine, as I grew up with Jules Verne influenced daydreams, and have a desire to one day own a steampunk watch by cult Japanese steampunk watchmaker Haruo Suekichi, whose watches are somewhat more elaborate than Vianney Halter's.

The opportunity to see some Vianney Halter watches in the flesh was not one that I had really envisaged happening, much less in Sydney, but so it was that after a few days of uncertainty due to a Chilean volcanic ash cloud's disruption of Australian airspace, fifteen of us found ourselves at Fix St James with Mr. Bertrand Bourgeois, Export Manager at Manufacture Janvier, and his travelling trio of watches.

The photos, alas, are not as good as they could have been due to the dim lighting, but I hope that they give some sense of the evening, which was filled with good food, good wine and some amazing watches. 

The food for the evening we left in the hands of Stuart Knox, owner of Fix. Although I did not take photos of all the (shared) dishes, they were as follows :

1. Fennel, Strzelecki & Grape Salad
2. Scallop w/ Cauliflower Sformato
3. Southern Fried Chicken Livers w/ ‘slaw
4. House Terrine w/ Pickles (on the night, it was chicken, hare and pork)
5. Fritto Misto (school prawns on the night)
6. Kingfish Carpaccio
7. Blue Eye
8. Pork Belly with pumpkin, Puy lentils
9. Choc "Yogo" with Raspberry and Honeycomb

Scallops

Southern Fried Chicken Livers

Kingfish Carpaccio

Some randon photos from the evening.

Bertrand on the right

A Gerald Genta Gefica.

The Panerai PAM 341. A 60mm monster of a watch and not for most people's wrists, but it sits well on its owner's.

Two MIHs in the house. The one on the right is sporting an ABP strap.

This is the DeBethune DB15. Just a stunning elegant watch, and very popular on this evening.

As you can see, we had to use some supplementary lighting for better photos.

A very special Janvier that is spoken for. It was a privilege to be able to see this watch.

One thing which surprised not just me was that all of these watches are quite different in the flesh.  For example, I thought that the Antiqua would be quite a hefty clunky watch, but it is far more delicate than photos would lead you to believe, and far more light and thin. Very comfortable to wear as well, I might add. I had expected to like the Trio more than the Antiqua, but as soon as I saw this, my loyalties immediately switched.

An indication of the size of the Antiqua, next to this beast of a watch.

The Trio was thicker than I expected, but its clean sharp lines quite beautiful and minimalist. Less steampunk, perhaps.

A final shot of all three. I think I'd like the Antiqua in WG.

After Fix St James, it was one more for the road at Bambini Wine Room.

I'd like to thank the very engaging Bernard for coming all the way to Australia and to Sydney, and for giving us an opportunity to see Manufacture Janvier's stunning creations. Hopefully we will meet again, either here or in Switzerland.

Apart from the sheer pleasure of being able to handle these timepieces and to see the finishing and detailing close up, the evening confirmed two things for me. 

Firstly, that when it comes to the "Independents," one really has to see the watches in the flesh. You simply don't get an accurate enough representation of their watches in photos. Secondly, it made me realise that yes, there is something really quite special about watches from the Indies...

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Here's looking at you D....

Wagyu Tri Tip, watercress, handcut chips.

Lunch : 12 August 2009.

Fix St James
111 Elizabeth St
Sydney NSW 2000
Ph :(02) 9232 2767

More Fix St James
111 Elizabeth St
Sydney NSW 2000
Ph : (02) 9232 2767


A steak craving by Sibling1 during her recent visit back to Sydney from the Old Dart resulted in two steak related meals.

First up was a dinner at Fix St James, and second was lunch at Kingsley's Steakhouse.

The location of the first dinner was decided via Twitter after a lot of ruminating over menus and options lead to a public plea for help. Suggestions came immediately from the Twitterati – namely the Chophouse and a tweet from Mr Fix St James himself, Stuart Knox that they did a mean steak. Lo and behold, a couple of days later they were the recipient of Time Out Sydney’s “Best Steak” award!

Perusal of the respective menus by the sibling lead to a post midnight Twitter reservation for dinner.

Unfortunately the lighting there was just a little dim for my little P&S that I had brought along (I’m not quite yet confident enough to drag out the new Canon 450D at every meal, preferring to try to be discreet when I can), so the photos are really quite inadequate for anything other than a general impression. Given that I didn’t end up having steak myself (the only one available on the night was the Cape Grim Scotch Fillet Tagliata), I’ll probably get some better photos at a later point of the Wagyu Flank with Chips & Eschallot Sauce ($29) that I want to try, as well as a better one of the Tagliata.

First up was the Stuffed Zucchini Flowers ($3.50ea), which I’d had on my first visit. Second time around they were still light and crispy. Because my photos were so diabolically bad, here is my photo from my previous meal.

Naturally the sibling, being the one in need of iron, ordered the Cape Grim Scotch Fillet Tagliata ($35).

Whilst I, my interest having been piqued by various Tweets on the dish, went for the Bollito Misto with Mustard Fruits.

I’ll be upfront here and admit to being marginally clueless about precisely what Bollito Misto (“boiled meats”) was, but since having had it, I have done a bit of reading up on the dish.

Bollito Misto hails from the Piedmont/ Piemonte region and is also eaten in Lombardy and Emilia. In fact during my online mini research into the dish, there seemed to be a little occasional regional competition regarding ownership of its origins. With regional variations, at its core it consists of boiled meats (up to seven) such as beef, veal, pork, chicken, tongue, cotechino sausage and sometimes pig’s trotters or even a pig’s head.

The boiled meats are served with a variety of condiments, but the only one required is bagnetto verde (or “bagnèt”), which is similar to salsa verde.

I actually read on one website that if you want to be hardcore about it, you can go the way of seven meats and seven sauces, but this seemed to be an exceptional view.

As this was my first experience with this dish, I admit that I didn’t know quite what to expect taste wise. I have a natural preference for strong tastes, and am conscious that this means that with the passage of time, my tastebuds may have been at risk of being inured to the detriment of more delicate and subtle tastes. A dish such as this is not a natural choice for me, and it really is as simple as this – had I not read repeated tweets about it and been intrigued, I’d not have ordered it. Am I usually this susceptible? No, but I had actually gone to Fix St James expecting to have steak, so it was a spur of the moment thing.

This dish struck me as very much an Autumn/ Winter dish. It was very earthy, and the bagnetto verde made perfect sense as an accompaniment. The chicken was tender to just the right level; I’m not much of a Hainanese Chicken Rice person but the immediate comparison came to mind when I ate the chicken was that it was cooked to what would be the perfect level for Hainanese Chicken. The beef was tender and if you peer carefully at my blurry photo you can see the sausage, which is next to the vegetables. I think that for me, what I liked most about the Bollito Misto was actually the broth, and though I know that one isn’t meant to drink it as a soup, I actually would have quite liked to have had a small bowl of it, as I found it quite moreish.

Segueing back to the Tagliata, I didn’t feel that I could take any more than one slice of the beef from my sister but that small morsel of Cape Grim scotch fillet was pretty tasty, and I wanted some more of it. I quite like that on the Cape Grim website you can read about some of the farmers and even track your beef back to the farmer! The site doesn’t seem to have been updated though, as Fix St James is not listed as a restaurant serving their beef....!

The restaurant was fairly busy during the evening but Stuart took the time out to come over to say hi a few times – thank you Stuart! Unbeknownst to me at the time, he was multitasking with the occasional tweet as well LOL.

We decided that we could fit in some dessert and so it was one Warm Chocolate Pudding ($14) each.

What’s not to like about warm chocolate puddings with the centre oozing chocolate? It came with a small jug of blueberry compote which I somehow neglected to photograph. Neither my sister nor I really used the cream; we found the blueberries more to our tastes because they cut through the richness of the chocolate.

Many thanks to the Stuart and his staff for the lovely evening and congratulations on the Time Out award.

I will return to Fix St James because I want to try the Wagyu Flank, and because I want a Tagliata of mine own.....I have to say that what little I had of the Tagliata it was markedly tastier than the steak I had at Kingsley's but that's for the next blogpost....

Meanwhile, here is the gratuitous watch shot from the evening - the Omega Speedmaster Professional "Snoopy Award".

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Fix St James

Fix St James
111 Elizabeth St
Sydney
NSW 2000
Ph : (02) 9232 2767

Meal : 27 May 2009


P had been given several CBD options for a special lunch, the geographical restriction resulting from his work commitments. They were all restaurants which he had not yet visited, and he chose Fix St James. I had been hoping for the possibility of trying the “Quick Fix”, and hoped that ABC would be open to this suggestion. Happily, he was!

There are two options to the “Quick Fix” – the first is five dishes to share at $35pp, and the second, at $40pp, includes a glass of house wine and coffee. These two deals are prominently promoted via a blackboard outside the restaurant, and GFC or no GFC, they seemed to be doing fairly well on the day that we dined, as well as on a subsequent date when ABC and I did a coffee pitstop there.

One of the beauties of the “Quick Fix” and its more expensive sibling the “Long Fix”, which consists of the “Quick Fix” plus pasta, main and dessert ($65pp) is that you don’t know what you’re going to get until it arrives. Unfortunately, this also means that if you dine there twice within a short period of time, there’s a possibility that you may encounter a certain amount of meal duplication. We weren’t actually asked by the staff about whether we had any allergies etc so I guess that the assumption is that you don’t have any food restrictions if you’re going to put your stomach in the hands of the chef!

I suppose that the first dishes came out quickly because it is a “quick fix” after all, but the simultaneous arrival of

Heirloom Tomato Panzanella Salad

Flash Fried Calamari w/ Aioli

Stuffed Zucchini Flower

meant that space was at a premium, and the plates, bread, glasses etc had to be juggled a bit. The stuffed Zucchini flowers were crunchy and delicate and of the two non salad dishes, probably my preferred dish because the calamari was slightly more chewy than I had expected it would be. The Panzanella was a nice contrast to the other two dishes; I don’t know whether it was simply a case of ABC having taken all the nice crunchy bread and the anchovy, but at the end of it I was trying to unsuccessfully conjure up some more of both!

The wait between these three dishes and the next one was less rushed than the initial one, and it gave us time to simply enjoy yourselves and me to take photos of ABC’s two Longines, a photo which unfortunately didn’t turn out very well...

The one on the left is the Longines Sports Legends "Legends Diver" L3.674.4.56.2 and on the right, the Longines Master Collection L2.717.4.78.5 Quadruple Retrograde.

The next dish to appear was the Beef Carpaccio, normally not a dish I order, but one which I do enjoy on the rare occasion that I eat it.

I quite enjoyed having the radish there as well as the baby herbs, as the radish gave the tender beef a nice crunchy textural contrast.

The final dish, and by this time ABC was sufficiently full to have been happy to stop eating, was Quail with Bacon & Cabbage.

The quail was very slightly pink in the middle, which is how I like it, but love quail as I do, for some reason the part of this dish which rocked my boat the most was the bacon and cabbage. I could have eaten bowls of it!!!

By this time we were “well full”, as they say, and there was no room for dessert, but I felt compelled to have a small sugar hit so we ordered two truffles with our coffee.

Would I return? Yes. The QF deal was a good one, and the food to my liking. Next time perhaps I’ll try something else.




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