Engineering at the table
My work with BMW: German precision, lifestyle curation, and evenings where cars, design and food share a room.
BMW is a name many people link with mine, and with reason. We have worked together since 2017 and still do: private dinners, launches, films, and evenings for BMW owners. The spirits houses put a bottle at the centre of the table, and the kitchen houses shape the room around the cooking. BMW brings something else: engineering, design, and a particular way of hosting people.
BMW Malaysia and I have worked together since 2017, and the relationship continues. It reaches past single events. BMW has featured me in its films and campaigns, I have cooked for BMW owners and dealers at private evenings beyond the ones on this page, and I drive a BMW myself. Restraint is how BMW operates, and the relationship has respected that.
BMW does not bring a culinary subject to the table. It brings a century of engineering, a design language people recognise, and a lifestyle programme that asks me to think beyond the kitchen. I have cooked with all of that in mind.
BMW and I began with a launch. On 19 April 2017 BMW Malaysia unveiled the new 7 Series plug-in hybrid, the 740Le with eDrive, at Menara Ken, TTDI, and I cooked the dinner with the Enfin team: canapés, then a degustation that ran from a truffle amuse-bouche through poussin with keluak crème to a chocolate Bavarian.
The first BMW programme was The Society, a series of private dinners at Enfin by James Won, Menara Hap Seng, from July to December 2017. Four of the dinners were held at Enfin, hosted by BMW Malaysia and its authorised dealers.
The Society was built on discretion. Media was kept to a minimum to protect the privacy of the guests and the exclusivity of each evening, and I have kept to that at every BMW evening since.
Two films from these years: a profile from 2022, and one with the BMW 7 Series from 2023.
For The Macallan’s James Bond 60th Anniversary launch at Shin’Labo, I brought BMW in, and the BMW i7 joined the night. James Won, 007, The Macallan and BMW met in one room as one launch. The full story is on The Macallan page.
In 2023 BMW came to Shin’Labo to hand over the first all-electric BMW i7s in Malaysia to their new owners, and I cooked the dinner for it: an electrified menu, served in the yōshoku room at Lalaport. The guests stay private, as they always have with BMW.
Since 2017 BMW has asked for the kind of evening where cars, food, design and hospitality meet in one room, and it still does. The work has stayed quiet, and private evenings have stayed private.
Engineering as design. Mobility as lifestyle. Cross-disciplinary curation as discipline. BMW's world is wider than gastronomy alone, and this part of my work is held at the wider standing the marque carries.