Last week, at a luxurious six-course dinner at New York City’s world renowned Eleven Madison Park restaurant, Blancpain introduced Daniel Humm, a three-Michelin-starred chef and Blancpain watch enthusiast, as an official “friend of the brand,” presenting him with a one-of-a-kind, engraved Fifty Fathoms timepiece.
Co-hosted by Blancpain vice president Alain Delamuraz and Blancpain North America brand manager Adam Bossi, the event began with a pre-dinner cocktail hour, during which guests could take a guided tour of Eleven Madison Park’s bustling but pristinely clean kitchen, watching the food preparation staff at work under the watchful gaze of a Blancpain wall clock.
Afterward, guests were seated in a private dining room for the six-course menu, created specially by Chef Humm for the occasion. The highlight of the dinner — in which each course was paired with a specially chosen wine — was Humm’s signature dish, lavender and honey whole-roasted duck. In typically Blancpain style, each course was also paired with a watch that best represented its attributes; the duck, for example, was matched up with Blancpain’s signature complication, its moon-phase. The watches were presented by Blancpain collector and enthusiast Jeff Kingston, WatchTime’s partner in its popular series of “Inside Basel-Geneva” watch collector events. (Kingston, also a wine connoisseur, either chose or approved the wine pairings.)
After his welcome speech, Delamuraz presented Chef Humm with a Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Tourbillon watch, with a special engraving on the caseback depicting three stars and the words, “Bravo… Michelin/Beard Outstanding Chef.”
Humm, who was born in Switzerland, is the executive chef at Eleven Madison Park and the NoMad Hotel in New York City. The son of an architect, he applied the principles of structure and design, inherited from his father, to his own passion of cooking. After working at many of Switzerland’s finest hotels and restaurants, he moved to the United States in 2003 and took the reins at Eleven Madison Park in 2006. He received his first Michelin star in 2009 and four stars in the New York Times and the James Beard award for “Best Chef New York City” in 2010. Eleven Madison Park was named “Outstanding Restaurant in America” in 2011.
His appreciation for fine timepieces, and the Blancpain brand in particular, was kindled in his days as a young chef in Zurich, passing by the windows of the watch shops on the city’s famed Bahnhofstrasse. Today, he says, he alternates between wearing a Fifty Fathoms Tourbillon — the first wristwatch with a one-minute flying tourbillon — and his other favorite, the Blancpain Villeret Chronograph.
“My Blancpain watches truly represent who I am,” Humm said. “They are both classic and modern, sporty and elegant, and, of course, Swiss.”
There was one other watch presented at the event, following dessert: Blancpain’s new Women’s Chronograph Grande Date, which will be formally introduced at Baselworld 2013.
