A taste of Macau’s Michelin-starred restaurants

CITY OF DREAMS Manila gave guests a taste of what a three-Michelin star (the highest honor bestowed by the Michelin Guide) dinner feels like during the Glow Your Way to Macau tourism campaign launch on Oct. 10.

The dinner was prepared by chefs Otto Wong (who heads Pearl Dragon, with one Michelin star) and Kelvin Au Yeung (of Jade Dragon, with three Michelin stars), with Christophe Duvernois lending a hand for dessert. The Pearl Dragon and the Jade Dragon are located at Studio City Macau and City of Dreams Macau, sister properties of City of Dreams Manila, both under the Melco Resorts & Entertainment Limited parent.

The dinner opened with Chilled Alaskan King Crab Aged in Yellow Wine, with caviar. The sweetish and delicate crab was given an accent by the luxurious caviar — washed down with champagne, of course. The next dish was a Deep-fried Scallop with Fresh Sichuan Pepper Sauce. This was strongly fragrant, with a scent of both fire and fresh grass. The scallop, encased in breading, flaked apart delicately. The sauce and the scallop together had a strange, satisfying combination, each bite strangely feeling and tasting like a full meal, so dense it was with flavor.

The Roasted French Cod with Aged Mandarin Peel and Black Beans sounds at first glance like a reinterpretation of a classic fish and black beans dish. Transformed into a glaze, the black bean was a mere suggestion and a flashback and aftertaste after swallowing. While chewing, the focus is on the firm and delicate fish, with a soft skin waiting to be punctured by a fork. This was paired with a 2011 Chateau de Beaucastel Chateauneuf du Pape; to the fish, it lent interest and piquancy.

A slow-cooked Green Lip Abalone and Wagyu Beef Cheek with Truffle came next. The abalone had a rubbery-chewy texture, covered in sauce but still strangely clean, reminding one of chewing on a very firm boiled egg white. The beef, with a hint of nuts in its taste, paired well with a Chateau Siran Margaux from 2018, for it grounded the wine and gave its tannic, musky complexities some direction.

The savory portion of the dinner ended quite peacefully with a Hot and Sour Soup with red prawn, chicken, and rice; with a powerful broth tasting of shrimp and the sea.

Dessert was a final showcase with a tree made entirely out of chocolate (which one could nibble on like it was a cutting from Willy Wonka’s factory), followed up by a delicate creme brulée flavored with almonds and topped with an almond tuile.

Stripping down the dinner to its essentials, what we had could have been any meal in a high-end Chinese restaurant. Served with panache however, we begin to see the reason why Chinese food is popular around the world (not counting the Chinese diaspora, which incidentally made Cantonese cuisine the most popular in the world, thanks to large numbers of migrants from Guangdong province).

Calvin Soh, Vice-President of Culinary for Melco, discussed how they treated what were traditional dishes to make them worthy enough to earn multiple Michelin stars.

There are the ingredients. The aged orange peel (not a very ubiquitous ingredient, but a luxury) used in the fish, for example, can be aged for up to decades. “It could be as expensive as gold,” Mr. Soh pointed out.

“It’s about the freshness, the right season of the ingredient, and prepared in a correct way, prepared carefully and created with perfection. Food can be simple dishes that we serve every day, but we maintain the highest standard,” he said. — Joseph L. Garcia