Hotel Lisboa, 3/F Lisboa Tower
2-4 Avenida Lisboa, Macau
Gourmet Belly’s food journey to Macau just wouldn’t be complete without a Michelin Starred meal or two…and so we booked Joel Robuchon’s (one of the world’s most celebrated chefs) 3 Starred, Robuchon a Galera for lunch.
V and I were both a little hesitant about going given our previous experience at L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon in London was just so-so…
I still recall fighting over the 8-piece bowl of chips we ordered to buff up our meal (yes – there were literally 8 crinkle cut chips!!), and leaving the restaurant craving a McDonald’s cheeseburger was just a little bit disappointing…but given it had rave reviews by food critics and family and friends alike – we thought we’d give it a go.
Housed in Hotel Lisboa, one of the original casinos in Macau before it turned into Asia’s Vegas – Robuchon a Galera has been dubbed the best French restaurants in all of Asia and supposedly the best restaurant in Macau.
The experience didn’t start off too well as all 6 of us turned up to our reservation late! So late in fact, the person who actually made the reservation ended up arriving over an hour late, and almost missed the opportunity to order off the menu…but I won’t name any names 🙂
First error for a 3 Michelin Starred restaurant is not offering us any wine with our meal, second error was dropping an incredibly delicious bread basket onto our table and not explaining what each of the 6 options in there were…we of course tried all of these, so found this out the “hard” way while waiting for the final two on our table to get to the restaurant.
The most popular choices around the table were the Smoked Foie Gras on Marinated Mushroom (signature dish), the Braised pork cheek with green olive gratinated creamy polenta and parmesan, and the Caramelized quail stuffed with foie gras and mashed potatoes. We all of course went for the dessert trolley selection of speciality cakes which we had all be eyeing out the minute we sat down at the table.
At $398 for the Executive lunch, the meal was good overall, but am not too sure it warrants the 3 Michelin Star accolade. Not only did they not offer us wine, or tell us what was in the bread basket assortment, they didn’t even explain the dishes we had ordered when putting these in front of us. That’s not very silver service at all!
Perhaps to get that sort of experience, we’d need to get there on time, and go for the 16 course degustation?! Next time…maybe when we strike it lucky at the Casino!
DID YOU KNOW:
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Hotel Lisboa owned by Macau’s casino magnet – Stanley Ho; is the only complex in the world to house 3 Michelin Starred restaurants under one roof – Robuchon A Galera, The Eight Restaurant and Tim’s Kitchen. Sadly we only had room in our bellies for one.
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The tableware is Cristofle. The porcelain is Bernardaud from Limoges. The crystal is Reidel. The tureens are silver. The wine list is an astonishing 35 pages long and features more than 2,500 wines…but I can’t confirm given we didn’t have the privilege of viewing the wine menu
Gourmet Belly 