From a kitchen in Niederkorn, in the country’s southern belt, Julien Cliquet spent 10 years turning catering into an art form and quietly made crafted elegance a signature of the Grand Duchy.
Some entrepreneurs never build the same thing twice. For Cliquet, that is not a strategy: it is an anchored temperament. A decade after he opened La Maison Cliquet in Niederkorn, in the south of Luxembourg, he still measures his success by one thing: the impossibility of routine. ‘’No two days are ever the same. Never. And I couldn’t work any other way,’’ he explains.
One Monday he is composing an intimate dinner for 10; by Wednesday he is orchestrating a reception for 500 guests, and by Friday he is building an entire menu around an ingredient he has never touched before.
A rather fitting confession from a man who describes himself, without irony, as both an artist and a craftsman. In a country where excellence is expected and discretion is prized, Cliquet has spent a decade proving that catering, too often treated as a logistics business, can be a discipline of emotion, precision and taste. His anniversary is, in many aspects, a Luxembourg success story: a clear conviction, pursued with great persistence.
This job is, above all, a passion, and passion isn’t really something you choose, it chooses you.
How naivety shaped a clear vision
Cliquet traces the origin of the company to a quality he now describes, laughing, as naivety. The more honest account is that he simply could not express his idea of food inside anyone else’s kitchen. At 25, he had a precise picture of what he wanted to create, and the conviction that it could not be realised on someone else’s terms. Fear, he admits, was present from the start. It was simply outweighed.
’’The fear of missing out on my own project was bigger than the fear of failing. And when you’re 25, you feel a little invincible,’’ acknowledges the entrepreneur.
That early audacity became a working philosophy guiding his journey.
Facing the unavoidable
No portrait of a decade-old events business can avoid the rupture of 2020 and 2021. When the pandemic arrived, the events and hospitality industry did not slow; it stopped. Overnight, Cliquet’s calendar emptied to zero. He describes the period without understatement as brutal, and admits the company came close to going under. What he refuses to do is romanticise it. Instead, he treats it as the most painful accelerator of his career.
Rather than wait, the company reinvented itself in weeks. It launched home catering services for clients confined to their kitchens, moved its expertise online through workshops, and reinforced its corporate offer. The crisis forced agility and diversification on a business that might otherwise have stayed comfortably specialised.
The verdict, in retrospect, is clear: ’’We nearly went under, but we came out much stronger. Looking back, it was almost a painful accelerator.’’
An artistic approach to craftsmanship
Few markets test a chef quite like Luxembourg. Highly international, deeply multicultural and notably demanding. Yet this challenge is not seen by Cliquet as an unbearable issue but as a genuine gift. He does not chase the safe middle and does not chase artificial performativity in his creations. Everything is truthful. Everything is created from scratch for every plate, every occasion, every client.
In this truth, he seeks what he calls the universal in the local; a specific texture, flavour, presentation that can connect with anyone. Global influences are welcome but only ever with intention. Curiosity remains the driving force behind Cliquet’s exceptional artistry for the past decade.
The first meeting with a client, he insists, resembles a therapy session more than a sales call. He listens. He wants to understand who his clients are, what they are celebrating, which flavours are bound up with their memories. From that conversation he constructs what he calls a through-line: a taste story that runs from the first canapé to the final plate. The craftsman in him takes over in execution, where every technical element must be flawless, but the artist remains present to ensure that emotion is never lost in the details. Both, he says, have to coexist right through to the last course.
This conviction that food is about emotions rather than mere sustenance, is captured in the line by humorist Pierre Dac that adorns his website: that of all the arts, the culinary one best nourishes the soul. For Cliquet, this is not mere decoration but a manifesto.
Food isn’t just about eating. A smell can throw you back 20 years in an instant. When I cook for someone, I don’t just want to fill plates, I want to fill hearts.
Nothing happens by chance
Ask Cliquet what he hopes to celebrate at the company’s 20th anniversary, and he does not mention growth or awards. He says: passing it on. He speaks candidly about the cost of arriving where he is today: the invisible hours and sacrifices, and the value of transmission.
Nothing happens by chance. You have to fight, work hard, not wait for things to fall into your lap. Life is tough, and that’s exactly what gives it value.
So, his goal for the next 10 years is almost pedagogical. Hoping to light that same fire in a handful of young cooks through unapologetic perseverance. Then, he will believe to have achieved something that will truly outlast him. For an entrepreneur who has spent a decade making each occasion singular, it is a strikingly durable goal.
That, perhaps, is the quiet lesson of La Maison CLIQUET’s first decade. In a business defined by fleeting moments: an evening, a dish, a moment that dissolves immediately after it is served, Julien Cliquet has been building something deliberately permanent. A standard of craftsmanship, a register of elegance and a belief that food is a tapestry woven with deep meaning. The next 10 years will be measured by one thing: whether that crafted artistry can be taught and passed on, the most entrepreneurial aim of all.
This article was published in the 10th edition of Forbes Luxembourg.
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