Joris Rousseau:
The Spring Collection 2026

About the Chef

Joris Rousseau was born and raised in Paris, where his earliest connection to food came through family traditions of making desserts and weekends spent cooking on the family farm in the French countryside. Surrounded by produce grown by his family, he developed an instinctive attachment to nature long before it became the foundation of his cuisine.

His path into cooking was a deliberate choice. Rather than pursuing a career as a professional rugby player, Rousseau enrolled in culinary school and began a journey through renowned Michelin-starred kitchens in France, learning from chefs including Guy Martin and Yannick Alléno. He later travelled extensively, cooking at large-scale events around the world and widening his understanding of different culinary cultures.

At Feuille, Rousseau works in close creative dialogue with consultant chef David Toutain, whose nature-led philosophy aligns closely with his own. Before the restaurant opened, Rousseau spent more than five months working with Toutain in Paris, refining the ideas that would shape Feuille’s identity.

Today, as Executive Chef of Feuille, he leads a cuisine defined by flavour, artistic clarity and sustainability — a contemporary French language rooted in nature, responsible sourcing and the full expression of each ingredient.

About the Restaurant

Feuille is a contemporary French restaurant in Hong Kong created by ZS Hospitality, in collaboration with consultant chef David Toutain and Executive Chef Joris Rousseau. Located on Wellington Street in Central, the restaurant honours seasonality, French culinary refinement and the vibrant local produce culture of Hong Kong.

Since opening, Feuille has become one of the city’s most distinctive nature-led dining rooms. The restaurant holds one Michelin star and a Michelin Green Star, recognition that reflects both the quality of its cooking and the depth of its sustainability philosophy.

At least 85% of Feuille’s ingredients are sourced locally or regionally from high-quality small purveyors, allowing the restaurant to build its menus around proximity, seasonality and responsible supply.

The result is a restaurant where French technique does not dominate nature, but listens to it. Feuille’s cooking is refined, but never disconnected from the land. It is precise, elegant and deeply aware of the ingredient’s origin.

Spring Inspiration

At Feuille, spring is understood through the life cycle of a plant.

The menu begins with grains and seeds, then moves through roots, stems and leaves, before arriving at flowers, fruits and origin. This structure gives the experience a natural rhythm: not a conventional seasonal menu, but a journey through growth itself.

Rousseau and the team work closely with farmers across Hong Kong, using every part of the ingredient — from stem and skin to root — in order to honour the produce fully and reduce waste.

This philosophy appears across the Terroir menu: lamiaceae seed with kombucha; mustard seed with shiso and sea grape; Feuille bread with dill pil pil; Kuruma prawn with pumpkin seed and caviar; wild fish with garlic and oxalis; Sai Kung spiny lobster with pumpkin and marigold; Shiqi pigeon with Kyoho and mugwort; magnolia with chocolate and rosella.

Spring here is not treated as decoration. It becomes structure, ethics and taste.

In the context of Nature’s Premiere, Joris Rousseau offers one of the collection’s most complete ecological readings of the season: spring as a living cycle, from seed to flower, expressed through contemporary French gastronomy in Hong Kong.