While the image of the old gambling den with its promiscuous girls and the smell of opium is still very much alive in the Western imagination, Macao is a long way from this cliché and has successfully negotiated the turn of the 21st century. At the end of 1999, after 400 years of commercial and cultural exchanges, Portugal elegantly withdrew from its trading post. The region returned to the fold of the Chinese motherland, but still enjoys a special administration and is primarily interested in its profits. The twenty or so casinos where Chinese from Hong Kong and the People's Republic flock every weekend fill its coffers sufficiently. On the downside, at the end of last year, the city experienced a certain loss of tourism, a loss of revenue that for a time froze work on its new hotels. But during the first half of 2009, the number of visitors increased, so it's more than certain that activity will pick up again on the huge bamboo scaffolding. More frenetic than ever. On this territory of around thirty square kilometres, made up of a peninsula and two islands - Taipa and Coloane - the gaming halls are the mainstay of the economy. So, to win the loyalty of its ever-increasing numbers of tourists, Macau is constantly increasing its leisure activities.
Coconut milk, saffron and curry
It offers both inveterate gamblers and groups on incentive trips a range of exciting activities: greyhound or horse racing - in season - shopping in the hotel arcades, extreme experiences such as the sky jump from the top of the Macau Tower, or a world tour of the best cuisine. A new asset, since the Michelin Rouge has just awarded it stars and a Bib gourmand.
It's true that, flirting with the Hong Kong food trend, the Chinese are increasingly appreciative of cuisines from elsewhere and are even beginning to train their palates in Australian, Italian or French wines. As Marc Pennaneach, Assistant Director of Food & Beverages at the Sofitel Hotel, points out, this is a real challenge: "China has 1 billion 400 million inhabitants. Imagine if each of them drank even one glass of wine a day; that would be millions of hectolitres. The battle for wine has already begun..."
Traditionally, Macau has a wealth of unusual dishes, starting with Macanese cuisine, which originated when the indigenous wives of the Portuguese prepared meals using local ingredients and spices from the trading posts in India and Mozambique. In fact, a section of the Macau Museum is devoted to this fusion, where the dining room table is covered with the fake dishes that colonists in the late 19th century loved so much. There's African chicken cooked in coconut milk, cod, hake or squid with saffron sauce, prawns or crab with pepper and curry, and Portuguese rice, very similar to paella. All washed down with Portuguese wines. It's here that we take groups to give them an idea of this cultural tradition, and if visitors want to learn more about these mixtures, we can get them to take part in a cookery course at the hotel school," points out Emilia Inès Wu of Gray Line Tours. We can also organise a Governor's Ball in an old Portuguese house, a themed party on Chok Wan beach on the island of Coloane, or a big barbecue on Fisherman's Wharf. On Fisherman's Wharf, boutiques, casinos and hallucinatory replicas of the Roman Coliseum or the Forbidden City have flourished. All of this is surrounded by a plethora of restaurants such as Camões, which serves great Macanese dishes, and the unmissable Portuguese bacalhau.
Kitchens under influence
For something more exotic and refined, groups should head to Taipa Island to sample some Asian delights served in one of the three restaurants of the Altira, one of the most chic hotels in the whole of Macau, with a breathtaking view of the peninsula and its skyscrapers. There's Ying, a Michelin-starred restaurant serving haute Cantonese cuisine, and Tenmasa, a replica of a famous Japanese restaurant, offering tempura - fine vegetable and fish fritters - eaten in the traditional way, on tatami mats set between paper partitions. Charles Ngai, in charge of public relations, is very proud of this place: "Everything comes from Japan, the furniture, the crockery, the chef - Takenori Noguchi -, the fish and even the flour and water needed to make the tempura batter. It's a place that can easily be made private for a small group, especially as at night the view of Macau's buildings, glittering with a thousand neon lights, is fantastic. For larger groups, particularly business travellers, the alternative is to dine in our second Japanese restaurant, Kira teppanyaki, where several cooks, with great acrobatics, grill seafood, beef or chicken on hot plates. Finally, on the terrace of our Italian restaurant Aurora, we invite wine tasters every Friday evening, always facing this exceptional panorama". On the island of Taipa, in the few streets that have been preserved from the real-estate madness, crowds flock to the pastry shops where apprentices bake almond cakes non-stop. These biscuits are so popular with the Chinese that everyone, without exception, brings back huge bags of them. A ritual visit for any group before or after playing at the casino, and while we're at it, at the tables of the Venetian, the most famous of them all. It has to be said that this 3,000-room hotel belonging to the American giant Las Vegas Sands has all the superlatives. Its gaming hall covers more than 10,000 square metres, and its shopping centre offers some 350 boutiques and a host of restaurants. For Jacky Leong of Shuntak Travel, "this complex is a must for all groups; but to bring them closer to the history of Macau, we invite them to cocktails organised in more typical locations, for example in front of the ruins of Saint Paul's for the Chinese New Year dragon dance, or in the gardens of the Mont fortress for a Fado evening. We also offer a 'Gourmet Tour' which allows participants to discover the main sites while sampling a variety of cuisines, such as the stalls in the Three Comucopias district where Burmese, Malay, Indonesian and Cambodian dishes are served. On this theme, we recently welcomed a group from Singapore who came with chefs to sample our haute cuisine. During their stay, many exchanges took place with Macao chefs. So why don't we try the same thing with some of France's top chefs?"
Gastronomic world tour
While Joël Robuchon is at the top of his game here with his restaurant Robuchon a Galera in the Hotel Lisboa, other establishments serve only traditional Chinese, Cantonese or Beijing cuisine, and have become benchmarks. At the Michelin-starred Imperial Court, you can enjoy typical dishes in a hushed atmosphere, such as Flambéed Drunken Prawns, large live prawns doused in rice alcohol and drunk to death before being flambéed: cruel but exquisite. Or the Peking Duck, a Peking-style lacquered duck, plump, tasty and cut into small pieces that are eaten wrapped in a patty with salad leaves. Large tables can be entertained at Noodle & Congee Corner, a Bib gourmand overlooking the casino of the Grand Lisboa hotel. Behind the glass wall, the chefs are busy in front of their woks, slicing a block of noodle dough or, like sanitised cowboys, lassoing a noodle into a simmering broth. Here again, the waiter in charge of serving tea goes to great lengths with his long-spouted teapot before pouring the precious infusion into tiny cups. For gourmets, the assortments of dim sum - small savoury and sweet portions - are delicious, as is the swallow's nest, which is nothing more than the dried drool of a swift, cooked in coconut milk to make a creamy dessert.
In Macau, any culinary adventure is possible. In the old quarters, there are countless canteens, and every time a hotel opens, people vie for ideas or a Michelin-starred chef to capitalise on the food trend that is sweeping the planet. Except that in tiny Macau, you can go on a gastronomic world tour in four days. Practically the same amount of time as it takes to tour the island.
