[Macau] Alain Ducasse at Morpheus

I just came back from my stay at Morpheus - Macau's newest hotel designed by the late Dame Zaha Hadid - and I'm still in awe with the magnificent architecture and gorgeous design of the hotel! One of the most exciting restaurant opening at the hotel is Alain Ducasse at Morpheus where the acclaimed chef is bringing his contemporary French fine dining cuisine to diners in Asia. The dining room is breathtakingly beautiful with glass chandeliers shaped to resemble a waterfall of light from ceiling to floor. We had a tasting menu of Alain Ducasse's signature dishes with an exquisite wine pairing including the chef's very own private-labeled champagne bottled just for his restaurants. 

We started the meal with two canapes; a Marinated Sea Bass with rice cracker and a basket of Barbajuans - a shallow-fried puff pastry commonly found in the French Riviera and North Italy and said to be Monaco’s traditional dish. Alain Ducasse created a bite-size version of the traditional dish where puff pastry shell is filled with Swiss chard, ricotta cheese and a mix of herbs.

The bread course was next and the star here is definitely the classic salted butter from Pascal Beillevaire. The artisanal butter maker from Loire-Atlantique still churns its butter from raw cream in a wooden churn, and the restaurant uses the same technique as in Le Louis XV where the butter is molded every day and served with an antique silver spoon on a cold marble.

The amuse bouche with beetroot was deliciously sweet with a slight spicy kick - a flavor profile that I was not expecting for French cuisine and I loved it.

The gorgeous Mediterranean Gamberoni (a rare, premium type of tiger prawn found off the coast of Italy) is a must-try here. Paired with a delicate gelee made with a bouillon of rockfish and topped with Gold Caviar, the gamberoni embodied the taste of the Riviera where the sweetness of the prawns and the savoriness of the caviar played off each other. This dish was also served at the 25th anniversary celebrations of Le Louis XV at the Hotel de Paris in Monaco in 2012.

The Steamed Duck Foie Gras with cherry rhubard and toasted brioche is a Ducasse signature with a special Macau twist where the foie gras is steamed instead of pan-seared. The steaming method gives the foie gras a springy tofu-like texture and a less gamey flavor, but personally I'd prefer the pan-searing method which caramelizes the surface and offers another layer of flavors.

The Line-caught Sea Bass, tender celery in hay and cooking jus is first marked on the grill and then finished in the oven. The Atlantic sea bass used in this dish are all line-caught - a more sustainable method of catching fish where the fishermen can be more picky and throw back less optimal fish into the water.

The Farm Veal Chop with young carrots and ginger uses one of the most premium breeds of cows in France which are raised in Limousine - a rural and scarcely populated region in Central France known for its expansive pastures and grasslands. 

The last course of the meal was a special Coffee and Chocolate dessert made from Ducasse's own chocolate workshop La Manufacture in Paris. With a combination of chocolate, coffee and toasted Japanese buckwheat in a cocoa bean pod from Madagascar, the dessert was surprisingly light and not too sweet. Each of Alain Ducasse's restaurants uses the same chocolate from La Manufacture to create their own unique chocolate dessert, so this is available only exclusively at ADAM.

Lastly, we ended our meal with a kitchen tour where the Chef de Cuisine Pierre Marty happily greeted us and answered our questions. The chef has worked for Alain Ducasse since 2008 in Monaco and Qatar before taking the helms of ADAM in Macau.

Stay tuned for the review of my stay at Morpheus (available here)!

*By Invitation

Alain Ducasse at Morpheus

Level 3, Morpheus

Tel: +853 8868 3432
https://www.cityofdreamsmacau.com/en/dine/international/alain-ducasse-at-morpheus/index.html

 

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