Taking a pocket watch out of one’s waistcoat pocket to give a passer-by the time: this gesture, outdated for some, is still practiced with pleasure by several watch enthusiasts. Alone in his workshop, a glass-walled room on the top floor of the Audemars Piguet Museum, Jean-Charles Bratschi creates pocket watches in their entirety using traditional craftsmanship. “Among the typical models, for example, I am making a minute repeater with a perpetual calendar, a chronograph and a split-seconds. They can be housed in yellow, pink, or grey gold, in titanium or in platinum, depending on the request.”

It’s an extremely long fabrication process, because it takes about nine months to complete a model. “I may have to adjust the 638 parts that make up a repeater watch several times to be sure that it’s working perfectly. Even to the point of refashioning some of the parts.” His creations are prized by collectors. Some even come to the workshop to meet the master watchmaker himself. Bratschi remembers a sixty-year old American who wore a vest with his Audemars Piguet Grand Complication, like an apparition from another era. “He told me that he was a member of a club of grand complication owners. They met regularly to proudly show off their treasures, as if they were collectible toy trains or valuable stamps,” smiled the specialist, who has been working for Audemars Piguet for 31 years.  Although he doesn’t think pocket watches will catch on again any time soon, he is determined to act as a guardian of this disappearing ancestral know-how and heritage.

From Tokyo to New York to Paris, Alain Ducasse’s cooking amazes those who appreciate exceptional products and subtle combinations. Ducasse, a French native but Monégasque by adoption, developed his palate early on. Born in 1956 into a modest family of farmers in Gascony in the Landes region of France, he loved the local products and specialties, such as foie gras and the porcini mushrooms that his grandmother taught him to cook. This precocious passion led to a lifetime career in the kitchen.

A talented cook’s assistant, he quickly climbed the ranks and in 1981 became chef of La Terrasse, a restaurant at Juan-les-Pins, France. Following a serious Learjet accident that kept him bedridden for nearly two years, Ducasse took up his career again with gusto. He was named Chef des Cuisines of the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo in 1987 and obtained three stars in the Michelin Red Guide in 1990.

In the following years, he created restaurants  — Spoon, Mix, and Beige – and published several books, the latest of which, entitled “Nature”, promotes the principles of simple, healthy and tasty cooking. His career has earned him recognition as the most eminent chef of his generation. An enthusiast of haute horlogerie, he owns several exclusive watches, including an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak. “I am captivated by the innovation of the artists who designed this watch. In shape and materials, it expresses the studied boldness of a man’s timepiece,” the top chef confided to GQ Magazine last November.

Alain Ducasse: www.alain-ducasse.com

The Spoon Restaurant chain : www.spoon.tm.fr