Robuchon au Dome: revisited (Macau)

July 2012

43rd Floor, Grand Lisboa, Avenida de Lisboa, Macau
Tel: +853 8803 7878
www.grandlisboahotel.com/dining-Robuchon_au_Dome-en

When we heard that our erstwhile favourite French restaurant in Asia, Robuchon a Galera, had moved from the rather old Hotel Lisboa to the more luxurious Grand Lisboa next door, we were curious to try it again and found the excuse to make a special trip to Macau during our recent trip to Hong Kong. In the Michelin Guide, 'three stars' means 'worth making a special journey', and this is what we did. Despite typhoon warnings and torrential rain, we got soaked to the skin and endured choppy seas to get to Macau by ferry from Hong Kong, for the sole reason of eating at Robuchon's acclaimed temple of food.

It seemed that the restaurant spared no expense in doing itself up, as if to make up for the rather old and dated decor of its previous restaurant. Up the lift to the top floor, we were ushered through a corridor of wine bottles showcasing one of the largest wine lists we've seen in Asia (it was the size of a telephone book, as we remembered it, although now it's hard to tell as we were only given an iPad to choose our wines from). The dining room which we were welcomed into was spacious and the tables were well lit but widely spread and discreet.

Being on the top floor of arguably the most gaudy hotel building in the Asia, the restaurant was encased by a large glass dome which should have given diners a nice view of Macau below. However, it was raining heavily that night and the city view was mostly obscured. On the walls were renaissance-period european paintings as well as some chinese art, and there were plenty of crystal and gold fixtures. It was as if it was designed by someone for whom taste wasn't a consideration but spending as much money as possible was. It wasn't to our liking but it must be catering to a certain other type of clientele.

The restaurant had a pianist  (playing on a gold-gilded piano) and a singer, and they would perform popular English and Chinese favourites. When they finished the songs, some guests would clap. We found this bizarre. It felt like we were dining in a hotel lobby lounge (maybe that's what it has become).

Similar to our experience at Otto e Mezzo the previous night, we were served our amuse bouche immediately after we had taken our seats, before we were given the menu and also before we got our breads, which we thought was odd. The cheese puff was quite nice but the very thin tuna sandwich was delicious.

Unlike what we have gotten used to in Robuchon, there was no bread trolley (and none of their famous brioches). Instead we were presented with a bread basket (the waiter didn't bother telling us what breads were in there). The cheese and walnut breads were favourites of ours and we ordered extra portions. The winelist was more expensive than we remembered it and we ordered a Gevrey Chambertin which was forgettable (forgot which vineyard or vintage it was).

Le Caviar - surprise of caviar in fine coral jelly with aniseed cream: A Robuchon classic and well loved and anticipated by us. Luxury in a tin.

Le Mais - chilled corn veloute with shaved foie gras, beef consomme jelly and fresh black truffle: We had corn (and popcorn) as dessert a few days ago and it was a similar taste again this time in the starter. The combination of the cold corn soup and foie gras was novel yet fascinating and we literally licked the plate clean.

L'Oeuf Organique - slow cooked organic farm egg with sauteed girolle and lettuce veloute under a fine crisp tuile: A very good dish with the warm egg yolk oozing out into the lettuce soup. The parmesan crisp and the mushrooms added the necessary flavour and body to the dish.

Le Homard - roasted lobster with Malabar black pepper, stewed herbs and baby spinach: Probably the best dish of the evening, the dark sauce in particular was heavenly, not to mention the generous chunks of lobster meat.

L'Agneau de Lait - milked lamb chop with baby pak choi, honey bean in own jus: The most ordinary dish of the dinner was my lamb chop which was cooked very nicely but was just too predictable.

Le Boeuf "Kagoshima" - grilled Kagoshima beef with slow-simmered shallot in red wine served with potatoes soufflés: I had deliberately avoided beef because of my allergies but as it turned out I regretted not making an exception this time.  My wife had the classic Robuchon Kagoshima beef which was as good as she had remembered it.

Instead of the usual mash potatoes, these came with potato puffs instead. We regretted the unavailability of their signature mash potatoes.

Strangely for a French restaurant, after our main courses, we weren't asked if we wanted cheese. In fact, the cheese trolley was tucked away somewhere behind in the restaurant and it wasn't until we specifically asked did they push it out (we noticed that none of the other guests were having any cheese either). And when we asked, they were unusually stingy with the cheese, giving us the option of choosing only 3 types of cheese. To be fair the cheese was good, in particular the epoisses.

Being in such an over-the-top restaurant and surrounded by rather grand people, we decided to push the boat out ourselves and ordered a bottle of 1996 Chateau D'Yquem. It was quite simply the most exquisite sweet wine money could buy, 'Nectar of the Gods' indeed.

La Peche - fresh peach and verbena ice cream refreshed with rose Champagne: A lovely refreshing dessert, the peach was sweet and the champagne added a luxurious touch.

La Symphonie des Douceurs - dessert trolley: No ordinary dessert trolley, each dessert on this trolley was made to a very high standard and could easily be a standalone dessert dish. We especially loved the rum baba and the millefueille.

The petit four was more of the same great sweets. And to top it off, we were given a whole lemon pound cake to take home (it was our breakfast for the next 3 days).

Final Thoughts: Food-wise this was as good as it gets. Typically Robuchon, it combined classical French cuisine with a modern and often Asian twist, making each course a delightful surprise. The new dining room was as opulent as can be imagined but sadly some of the soul which the old place had in abundance was lost. Service too was bizarre, which we really didn't expect from this grand dame of French dining in Asia. Though service was professional, the waiters were somewhat awkward; for example, individual waiters served our food to us separately at the same time, and both waiters would then explain the food to us respectively at the same time, which resulted in us not being able to hear either of them clearly. In all, it wasn't the slick and silky smooth service we had come to expect from a three Michelin star French restaurant. Also, there was no offer of an aperitif when we were seated or any time thereafter, which we also thought was unusual. The live music was also quite distracting. All detracted from an otherwise fantastic meal.

Tim's Kitchen (Macau - Jan 11)

Shop F25, GF, Hotel Lisboa, East Wing, 2-4 Avenida de Lisboa
Macau, China
Tel: +853 8803 3682
www.hotelisboa.com


Update: Tim's Kitchen Macau lost its one Michelin star in 2013.


Tim's Kitchen is a 2-Michelin star chinese restaurant in Macau and is the sister of the similarly named restaurant in Hong Kong (see earlier review on Hong Kong's Tim's Kitchen: Tim's Kitchen Hong Kong). This is supposedly the better of the two, as Chef Lai Yau Tim has been known to spend more time at the Macau restaurant in recent years. Our experience at the Hong Kong restaurant did not impress us too much, but with our friends and third party reviews raving about Tim's, we felt that we should give it another try to see what the fuss was all about.

We came here for lunch, in the same hotel we were at the previous night for dinner at Robuchon. The decor is not impressive, as it was simple and quite old. Even the entrance was quite plain, with sakura floral prints adorning the sign board making it look at first glance like a low-end Japanese restaurant. We were given a large corner table by the window with good views of the lake (though the air quality in Macau was very poor and the views were partially obscured by the smog).

We asked for the wine list and was pleasantly surprised when the waitress came over with the same massive wine list as in Robuchon. But this time, I was not offered the iPad and had to flip through the large book to pick up a 2008 Puligny-Montrachet Premier Cru Les Folatieres from Henri Boillot, which was a very nice Chardonnay complementing the Chinese food well.

We were initially quite keen to order some dim sum, but fortunately we were told by the very friendly male waiter (who spoke excellent English) that the restaurant outsourced the dim sum to the Hotel Lisboa cafe and it was not made in Tim's. Initially, one of the waitresses came over and recommended most of the dishes we had the last time in HK, to our great reluctance. The male waiter then came over to our rescue again and helped us pick some of Chef Tim's other specialty dishes. We each started with the crystal prawn (accompanied by a slice of pork jerky, which strong taste balanced out the subtle prawn), which was a large portion for one person. The prawn was snow white and was quite exquisite.

Next, we each ordered the deep-fried crab claw with peppercorn, which was another superb dish. This was one to die for.

I had to try the snake soup with shredded snake meat, while my wife could not muster up the courage to try it and picked instead the black chicken consommé with sea whelk. Her soup was very good, while mine was also excellent. The snake soup and snake meat tasted like shark's fin but with a stronger taste. It was an intense soup which made me feel warm all over almost immediately (and caused me to have a sore throat after 2 hours).

After that, we had the sliced beef with vegetables and the pork pie with salted fish (which in particular went very well with the wine)

For dessert, we ordered the egg custard bun and papaya soup, which were also very good. The papaya soup was especially helpful in cooling me down after the very 'heaty' snake soup.

We really liked this restaurant. It was a simple and unpretentious place but with delicious food and an impressive wine list. It was much better than the HK one (I managed to get the waiter to admit that it's not the first time he's heard this said as well).

Food: Superb, restored my faith in Chef Tim
Wines: Exactly the same wine list as Robuchon upstairs, what can I say
Ambience: Nothing to crow about, looks like any other Chinese restaurant but interior is quite old and tired
Service: Very good, especially in helping us pick our dishes

Camera: Sony NEX5 16mm f/2.8

Robuchon a Galera (Macau)

January 2011

3F, Hotel Lisboa, 2-4 Avenida de Lisboa
Macau, China
Tel: +853 2888 3888
www.hotelisboa.com


Robuchon is a 3-Michelin star French restaurant in Macau. It is also recognised as one of the best French restaurants outside of France (certainly one of the best in Asia), and it was with this expectation that we went there for dinner. The restaurant is located in Hotel Lisboa, which is one of the older establishments in Macau. Hotel Lisboa (not to be confused with its newer but no less tacky sibling, Grand Lisboa) is well lit at night and looks right out of the set of a 70's Cantonese movie.

It was quite an effort to find the restaurant though, as the rather kitschy hotel had an east and west wing and omitted to put signs to direct us, which resulted in us walking around the small stores and KTV joints for 20 minutes before finally finding the right lift lobby.

The restaurant itself has a rather dated decor (check out the glittering stars on the ceiling), though the tables are very widely spaced ensuring privacy for its diners. In fact, as the restaurant was not full that night (it was a Monday evening), patrons were deliberately placed as far apart as possible (which is a nice change from the usual bunching of all the guests together so that the wait staff don't have to move around so much).

We were given a nice table by the window overlooking the bright lights of the gaudy Grand Lisboa casino, and offered champagne. In spite of the early 90's interior, we could not help but feel that this was a restaurant which was comfortable with its high standing. The service staff was excellent: in being confident yet respectful, discreet yet attentive.

Interestingly, each table had a different geomancy crystal for feng shui. Our table had a gold crystal dragon which at some point during the dinner, inexplicably started to tick (maybe it was starting to work and our luck was going to be coming in). We didn't know whether to touch it or to cover it with the napkin (we did neither).

As was to be expected from a Robuchon flagship, they take their bread very seriously. In addition to a plate of cheese puffs and olive breadsticks, they wheeled out a bread trolley from which we picked out some amazing bread. Butter was carved from two large blocks of salted and unsalted butters (largest block of butter we've seen). We had to be careful with the bread or dinner would have been over before we even started.

The wine list here was amazing. It was literally a tome larger than the yellow pages phone directory, which was probably too heavy for me to hold and flip through in any case, thus it was sensible that they had an iPad version (a rare touch of modernity in a classical French restaurant). Forget about Cepage, this was the best and deepest wine list we've seen outside Europe (most top restaurants in Paris and London would struggle to match this too). In addition, the wine list had the full range of really high end stuff (wines like the Bordeaux first growths, Petrus, La Tache and the other DRCs had vintages going back to the 1940s) yet had a good range of the middle priced and low priced (under HKD 1000) wines as well, which was impressive. Markups were not as steep as we would have expected in a 3-star restaurant in a Macau casino. We picked up a bottle of 2002 Clos des Lambrays Grand Cru at the recommendation of the helpful sommelier. It was a soft and subtle Burgundy which opened up deliciously as the night wore on.

For our amuse bouche, we were wowed by the Robuchon signature caviar in a tin with the base of egg custard and shrimp. This is something we had at Robuchon HK as an appetiser, but to be served this as an amuse bouche was of a different class.

For the third night in a row, we decided against the set menu and went for the nicest looking dishes in the ala carte menu. My wife chose the crispy farm egg served with caviar and dices of smoked salmon. This was something which we had in Robuchon HK last year, but it was slightly disappointing then as the crispy bits were to salty and masked the taste of the caviar (see earlier review: Le Jardin de Joel Robuchon Hong Kong) However, it wasn't a problem this time as the accompaniments were more subtle and brought out the luxurious taste of the caviar. It probably helped that she was given a generous heap of caviar as well. An excellent starter.

I chose the equally exotic sounding crispy papillotes of scampi with basil, shining sea urchin royale in delicate wasabi emulsion and lemongrass roasted lobster with vegetable cous cous. This was essentially 3 different appetisers, and was a substantial course. I started with the sea urchin and wasabi foam, which was unbelievable. The roasted lobster was also very very good and the lemongrass added something different to its taste. By the time I got to the crispy prawns, I was already quite full and satisfied!

For the mains, my wife went for the Breton lobster baked in cocotte with black truffles and green asparagus. This was cooked in a glass pot, which was taken out and served on the plate by the table. It was a generous portion of lobster, and was cooked to perfection.

My main course was the pan fried amadai fillet with crispy skin with artichokes in Brigoule style. It is something which we have tried at Robuchon HK and really liked, except that this time I got 2 fillets instead of just one. The scales of the fish were fried to a crisp and were delicious. I really enjoyed this dish (which went very nicely with the wine).

We were then served with a coconut and pineapple palate cleanser before the cheese trolley came by. It was the usual selection of French cheeses for us.

We were quite stuffed by this point and decided to skip the dessert course and go straight to the dessert trolley instead (yes, you can have both the dessert course and the dessert trolley). The dessert trolley had a good selection of tarts, cakes, rum baba, chocolates etc.

Dinner was rounded off by the sweets trolley. In typical French fashion, main course is just the halfway point of a full dinner and they keep feeding you desserts and sweets until you surrender.

Final Thoughts: It was a great dinner at a fantastic restaurant, and everything from the food, wine, ambience and service was of the highest standard. Maybe it wasn't as flashy as some of the newer restaurants but this was one which was very assured of its billing as arguably the best French restaurant in Greater China and one of the top ones in Asia. The wine list is worth a visit alone and the service of impeccable (wait staff was attentive without being too pushy). Decor is quite dated but despite the 70's feel, it was discreet and comfortable.