The Story
Les Dangereux
How a tasting menu called La Voyage — and a final, defiant avocado toast — was born in the weeks before opening.
As Cafe James became the only café in either Dubai or Abu Dhabi inducted into the inaugural Michelin Guide, James walked away from the business for good. His only focus now: open Les Dangereux — a restaurant with no previous iteration, no existing category, no path to follow.
"We not only had to open a restaurant, we had to create a new genre — a first of its kind in Abu Dhabi."James Soo Yong Kim
The goal was set without a single doubt: a Michelin star in its first year. It meant teaching a crew of cooks classic French sauces for the first time — simmering 100kg of beef bones for two and a half days for 1.5 litres of jus — and going from $9 coffees to sixteen-course tasting menus.
To do a true tasting menu, there had to be a story — not just lighter to heavier for its own sake. The problem wasn't too few stories; it was too many. So James let what was actually happening become the story.
"I decided, while smoking one of the fifty or so cigarettes a day, that I would make an avocado dish and shape it like… a cigarette."James Soo Yong Kim
A cylinder tuile filled with buttery avocado and olive oil. Crème fraîche and trout roe at the tip in place of smoked salmon; vinegar powder for acid and to recreate the white-and-brown two-tone of a filter. Saffron hollandaise, served on an ashtray. His first dish on the opening menu — and, symbolically, the last avocado toast he'd ever make professionally, after selling the recipe more than thirty times in his consulting years.
The flood gates opened. Within days the entire menu was finalized, and they named it for exactly what it was for them and would be for their guests: La Voyage.
From the snail reimagined with a spherified laban, to a confit-potato "rösti" rolled in a tamago pan, to A5 wagyu with Roquefort endive and bone-marrow tempura — each course earned its place. On the terrace, Les Dangereux runs its own à la carte menu with a single rule:
"Can you eat this dish every single day of the week? If yes — it goes on the menu."The Les Dangereux rule
