Top Chef Middle East Season 8 finalists Chefs Ghayda Aouni and Aladine Zitoun brought Tunisia and Morocco to The St. Regis Kuala Lumpur for two evenings—and expanded what this city knows of North African cuisine.

The kind of choreography that happens between two chefs who understand each other’s instincts is a sight to behold. I’m not talking about the rehearsed efficiency of a kitchen brigade, but something that requires no words. Watching Ghayda Aouni and Aladine Zitoun navigate the pass at The Brasserie on the final evening of Nuances in Seven was exactly that: Ghayda was plating the amuse of houriya and hummus with an open joy that animated her whole being, and Aladine beside her with the focused seriousness of a craftsman at home in his work, no words needed.

When they looked up and caught me watching, they smiled with the genuine delight of two people who were excited to share their craft with their guests.

The Guest Star Chef Series

Since its inception in 2016, The St. Regis Kuala Lumpur’s Guest Star Chef Series has brought an annually rotating roster of internationally acclaimed chefs to The Brasserie, each installment a dialogue between a visiting culinary voice and the hotel’s own.

Nuances in Seven was a part of The St. Regis Kuala Lumpur’s 10 Year Anniversary celebrations that hosted two evenings on 12th and 13th June 2026, followed by a closing Levantine Sunday Brunch on 14th June, across which Chefs Ghayda Aouni and Aladine Zitoun presented a seven-course menu inspired by the flavours and cuisine of the Maghreb.

READ ALSO: The St. Regis Kuala Lumpur Celebrates Ten Years at The Best Address

Chef Ghayda Aouni is Moroccan-born, internationally trained across the French Riviera, Courchevel, Dubai and beyond — a private chef of considerable range whose cooking draws on the produce-forward, sharing-first sensibility of the Moroccan household she grew up in, refined through a French technical register that shows in every plate. Chef Aladine Zitoun is Tunisian, Paris-based, with a career that traces through the restaurants and private kitchens of Tunisia, Doha and Paris — including a tenure at Balagan, the Mediterranean-inflected Parisian restaurant — before his emergence as a finalist on Top Chef Middle East Season 8. Together, they represent two distinct corners of the Maghreb brought into conversation across a single menu.

Nuances in Seven

Nuances in Seven is exactly that: seven courses, each a nuance, a shade of difference, a cultural inflection, a technique refined just far enough from its origin to reveal something new about it, where chefs from Morocco and Tunisia brought their culinary inheritances into conversation and the Maghreb filtered through French technique that both Ghayda and Aladine carry as fluently as their mother tongues.

Let Us Begin

Ghayda came to the table to introduce the amuse bouche: a constellation of black sesame hummus, carrot houriya and green chili sauced called tatbila arranged across the plate with French brioche set alongside. Houriya is a classic Tunisian carrot dip spiced with cumin that has been eaten at family tables. Her instruction was to put down the cutlery, and use your hands, and there’s something about doing just that in the elegance of The Brasserie. Sweet from the carrots, earthy from the dark tahini, and punctuated by the chilli, my only complaint was that it ended too soon.

Pacing throughout dinner was considered, and the two appetisers that followed established the evening’s dual authorship clearly. Ghayda’s signature Crispy Pastilla Cigar arrived as a feuilletine-crisp shell filled with spiced chicken and almond, lightly sweetened with honey, served with a roasted red pepper muhammara and sweet crumble. The combination of spice and sweetness together is unusual enough to give pause, and deliberate enough to reward it.

Aladine’s Smoked Baba Ganoush Tartlet was a generous phyllo shell of earthy eggplant purée over pistachio powder, with pops of fresh salmon roe and crowned with a Comté emulsion foam that arrived as an umami flourish over the smoke. It was texturally interesting with the crisp, and the soft, and the popping, and the aerated all melding together in the mouth.

From The Land and Sea

The Za’atar Crusted Monkfish was exceptional: firm and elastic in the way monkfish always is at its best, the crust aromatic and faintly sweet, but the star of the plate was the saffron beurre blanc, so perfumed with the spice that it preceded the fork. A fondant potato-esque batata harra and a citrus vierge—bright, herbaceous, almost an orange chimichurri—completed the dish that straddled the Mediterranean.

Aladine returned to the table when the Lacquered Duck Tajine arrived, spooning the sauce over the breast tableside with the same serious expression he wore at the pass. The duck breast was glazed to a sticky, caramelised finish, the Mediterranean spice blend lifted the bird’s natural gaminess without subduing it. On the side, a stuffed cabbage parcel and a quenelle of bissap gel—a hibiscus preparation with the texture of a rose jelly—completed a plate that ate like a steak and thought like a tajine simultaneously.

Flourishing Finishes

The Cocoa Caviar pre-dessert divided opinions at the table. A rocher of 60% dark chocolate ice cream dressed in extra virgin olive oil and topped with cinnamon-infused caviar on cacao crumble. Chocolate and caviar is a less natural alliance than vanilla and caviar—the bitterness of the chocolate competes where vanilla accommodates—and the caviar’s delicacy was largely absorbed into the mix.

Aladine returned a final time for dessert, spooning a strawberry and orange blossom syrup over the Kadayef, Rose & Red Fruits spectacle. Crispy kataifi pastry, vanilla cream, and strawberry in three textures: a gelee-sorbet with sumac, sliced macerated fresh berries, and the syrup soaking slowly into the pastry as it was poured. It ate like a reverse-engineered kunafeh, reimagined through a French sensibility, ending the Maghreb journey with where the two chefs are currently based in Saint-Tropez on the French Riviera.

After the Table

At the end of the evening, when I told Ghayda and Aladine that I had enjoyed the dinner very much, the gratitude on their faces was unguarded and genuine.

There is considerably more to the cuisines of Tunisia and Morocco than most, myself included, have yet to encounter. The more obvious entry points into Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cooking are Lebanese and Turkish, or less so Persian and Egyptian. The North African reaches of the Mediterranean that Nuances in Seven briefly and meaningfully introduced to Kuala Lumpur deserved my newfound reverence and is a reminder of and how much a well-conceived dinner can expand the map.

The Guest Star Chef Series continues later this year with The St. Regis Bali Resort and, in October, with Chef Emmanuel Stroobant of St. Pierre—the two Michelin-starred contemporary French restaurant in Singapore. Two more evenings worth watching for, from a series that has earned that attention year after year.

Images courtesy of The St. Regis Kuala Lumpur.

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