Julien Royer was born on September 1, 1982, in Cantal, a rural department in south-central France’s Auvergne region, into a family of fourth-generation farmers, according to Odette’s own chef biography. He spent his childhood foraging and harvesting on land his family had worked for generations, following the rhythm of the seasons more closely than the clock, an upbringing he has said shaped his entire relationship with ingredients long before he set foot in a professional kitchen. The single greatest influence on his cooking, he has said repeatedly, was his grandmother Odette, who prepared food “the way people cook when there is nothing to prove,” relying on pure ingredients and quiet, intentional touches rather than technique for its own sake, according to a profile by Food Stories. He would later name his flagship Singapore restaurant after her, and its Hong Kong sibling after his paternal grandmother Louise, tying both ventures directly back to that rural Cantal upbringing.

Royer’s professional training began under Michel Bras at his eponymous restaurant in Laguiole, an apprenticeship that instilled in him a lasting respect for ingredient purity and restraint. He went on to train under further French mentors, including Antonin Bonnet and Bernard Andrieux, a member of the Les Maitres Cuisiniers de France association based in Durtol, Auvergne, according to High Net Worth magazine. His early career then took him beyond France, through stints in the French West Indies and London, before he relocated to Singapore in 2008 to become chef de cuisine at Brasserie Les Saveurs inside the St Regis Hotel, per the same profile.

In 2011, Royer moved to JAAN, the fine-dining restaurant atop Swissotel The Stamford, where he spent four years as chef de cuisine building the restaurant’s reputation, according to Wikipedia’s sourced account of his career. That tenure gave him the standing to strike out on his own, and in November 2015 he opened Odette inside the National Gallery Singapore in collaboration with the Singapore-based hospitality group the Lo & Behold Group, a partnership that gave the young chef institutional backing for his first restaurant as owner, according to Wikipedia’s entry on the restaurant. Odette opened as a classic French dining room and quickly built the following that would carry it to the top of Asia’s dining rankings within five years.

Odette was awarded two Michelin stars in the inaugural Michelin Guide Singapore in 2016 and was elevated to three stars in 2019, a rating it has held every year since, according to Wikipedia’s sourced restaurant history. On Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list, Odette debuted at number nine in 2017 and won the Highest New Entry Award, climbed to number five in 2018, and reached number one in 2020, making it the top-ranked restaurant in Asia, before settling between second and eighth place in the years that followed through 2023. On the World’s 50 Best Restaurants global list, Odette debuted at 86th in 2017 and climbed to 18th by 2019. Royer was also named World Gourmet Summit Chef of the Year in both 2014 and 2017, per the same sourcing.

Beyond Odette’s own rankings, Royer has been recognized individually across the industry. He received Les Grandes Tables du Monde’s Prix Bernardaud du Meilleur Restaurateur, an award honoring outstanding restaurateurs within the prestigious global dining association, and in 2023 won the Estrella Damm Chefs’ Choice Award, the only prize in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants program voted on by chefs rather than critics, according to Tatler Asia. Odette itself picked up the G Restaurant Award for Best New Restaurant in 2015 and Restaurant of the Year in 2018, and was named a Wallpaper* Best New Restaurant in 2017, cementing its place as a fixture of Singapore’s dining scene well beyond any single ranking cycle.

Royer’s commercial ties run mostly through the drinks and hospitality world rather than mainstream consumer advertising. His longest-running relationship is with champagne house Krug: he was among Singapore’s earliest members of the Krug Ambassade programme during his time at JAAN and took part in the brand’s Single Ingredient initiative, and in 2026 Odette formally joined the exclusive Krug Ambassade family outright, a partnership Moet Hennessy Diageo Singapore’s Julian Quintero described as “a homecoming” rather than a new signing, according to Tatler Asia. He has continued to take part in Krug’s regional chef gatherings since, including a pre-release tasting of a new Grande Cuvee alongside other Southeast Asian chefs, as reported by CNA Luxury.

Royer has grown from single-restaurant chef-owner into a multi-restaurant operator across two countries, largely through partnerships with established hospitality groups rather than full independent ownership. In 2019 he opened Louise in Hong Kong, named for his paternal grandmother, a collaboration with Yenn Wong’s JIA Group set inside a heritage building at PMQ; it earned a Michelin star in its first year and has held it every year since, according to Louise’s own accolades page, with the concept described by the Lo & Behold Group as Royer’s “return to first principles” through the heritage recipes of his Auvergne childhood. In Singapore, he returned to the Lo & Behold Group in November 2021 to open Claudine, a French neo-brasserie inspired partly by his mother’s home cooking, set inside a preserved colonial chapel atop Dempsey Hill, according to the group’s own description of the concept. For Odette’s tenth anniversary in 2025, Royer oversaw a roughly two-million-dollar renovation of the flagship, closing it for three months before reopening in December with a brighter, art-deco-inspired dining room, according to The Peak Magazine. In 2026 he also published his first cookbook, Odette: Terroir to Table, through art publisher Phaidon, and has said he is exploring a more casual dining concept in Singapore, per the same report.

Royer has not made any personal real estate holdings public, and no outlet has published verified details of a home or property portfolio in Singapore, Hong Kong or France. His major identifiable assets sit inside the restaurants themselves: Odette’s roughly two-million-dollar, three-month renovation for its 2025 tenth-anniversary relaunch represented a significant capital commitment to the flagship’s 40-seat National Gallery Singapore space, according to The Peak Magazine. Beyond that direct investment, his financial interest extends to a partnership stake in Claudine through the Lo & Behold Group and in Louise through Hong Kong’s JIA Group, rather than sole ownership of either venture.