tasting perfection
Having claimed the accolades of ‘Chef of the Century’ by Gault Millau and over 28 Michelin stars, Joël Robuchon has clearly perfected the art of charming palates in his native France and at over 15 locations around the world. In a place like Macau, where visitors are cocooned in hyper luxury, the titular Robuchon au Dôme exemplifies the chef’s triumphant philosophy of gastronomy.
Its location within the dome of the Grand Lisboa hotel, on the 43rd floor, offers a real sense of arrival. You step through a sliding panel to be greeted by beautiful hostesses. An intimation of the restaurant’s much vaunted wine collection – some 14,500 labels – is reflected by the wallpaper featuring Château la Tour and Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.
The ambience which contributed to this three-Michelin star experience is ably enhanced by tinkling ivories from a shimmering grand piano, playing to a highly select room of only 13 tables. Running the place is its manager, Carlyne Leffondre, a Parisian who had also worked with Alain Ducasse before embarking on her Far East sojourn with Robuchon. Meanwhile, the kitchen serves up resplendent seasonal menu as well as gourmet lunches comprising an appetiser, soup, two mains, a cheese and coffee with sweets (MOP888+/RM494++).
One of Robuchon’s earliest metiers was as a 15-year-old pastry chef. Here, his execution of a bread trolley offers over 10 kinds of different breads, including the delectable ‘puff over’. Resembling a croissant, but shaped as a hollow muffin – this pastry is similarly crisped and buttery in right amounts. A close second had to be the cheese melted bun, flawlessly executed. Accompanying the bread basket are the chilled butters in glass domes, sourced from the South of France. These delicious butters are perfectly satisfyingly sliced through by warmed spoons – giving new meaning to a “hot knife through butter”. It’s a testament to Robuchon’s orchestration that even cutting into butter turns into a visually alluring spectacle.
Lunch started with an amuse bouche of L’Oursin, a creamy lobster jelly with a base of uni and jello in between, offering decadent flavours of umami and balanced by a light foam. The L’Enuf de Poule appetiser is a perfectly boiled egg with slightly runny yolk, nestling in a basket of pumpkin crisps and Iberico ham. An added hit of Comte cheese mousseline provides an underlying finish to an egg dish unlike any other.
A similar level of invention is applied to the Les Crustaces soup, a 180-degree spin on a traditional bouillabaisse. Two cups of soup arrive; one creamy and the other frothy, whereby the former is poured into the latter. The mixture enables you to savour shrimp balls and a sea urchin sauce immersed in rich seafood stock, all of which is enveloped by a light airy body. La Saint Jacques, the first main, serves up a large pan-fried scallop ringed with deep-fried artichoke and beautiful chickpea foam. Two pieces of oven-roasted duck breast fillet were the rudiments of the second course, embellished by three pieces of mille-feuille turnips sandwiching a layer of perfectly melting foie gras.
Dessert and afters is accompanied by a real sense of ceremony. I opted for a mandarin orange soaked in red wine and port, topped with blackcurrant sauce. This was accompanied by the house-made French pear sorbet. The burst of citrus and alcoholic complexity was what I needed to cut through the meal. Coffee, which took place two hours from the start of my lunch, proved to be another bounteous affair with mini madeleines hot from the baking tray. The chocolate and sweet trolley was wheeled in soon after, burgeoning with baked in-house and seasonal treats to cap a very grand affair in Macau’s most exquisite dining room.
