A highlight for many visitors to Macau is the chance to eat some deliciously authentic Portuguese food. And recently a new restaurant in town has brought something very special to the table. Chiado Portuguese restaurant at Sands Cotai Central quietly opened its doors last October for a soft opening, and now it is fully operational, under the expert guidance of Michelin star celebrity Chef Henrique Sá Pessoa.
Last month, Chef Henrique brought over three chefs from his Michelin two-star Alma restaurant in Lisbon for a series of exclusive dining events at Chiado, to introduce local gourmands to some of his signature offerings.
“I think people are little surprised with the standard and the way we present the food here, and we’ve been having amazing feedback,” says Chef Henrique when we speak to him before trying some of his impressive dishes.
“I guess the Portuguese representation in Macau is more simple and traditional. So the customer reaction is often ‘I didn’t know Portuguese food could be this refined,’” he adds.
The menu at Chiado demonstrates Chef Henrique’s skillful ability to masterfully take very traditional ingredients and flavours of some of Portugal’s most classic dishes, and give them a contemporary and haute cuisine flair.
“Traditional Portuguese cuisine is not associated with high end cuisine, but because I’ve been trained classically in French cuisine, I’ve always had a fine dining background. So once I blended this experience with traditional Portuguese cooking, I was able to present the food in a different way, a much more contemporary way, and use my experience to play around with Portuguese classics,” explains Chef Henrique.
“Sometimes Portuguese food is known to be quite heavy, so the one thing that I try to always focus on is lightness,” he adds. “I focus a lot on flavor, but I also want to keep the food light – light on the sauces, light on the way we cook it, using less oil, less salt, and trying to have a modern approach to presentation and keeping the flavours very clean, very balanced and light.”
Chef Henrique has described his style as ‘tasteful cuisine’, and he elaborates on this saying, “A lot of chefs focus on presentation or creativity. I focus on flavor. Sometimes you look at some dishes, they look beautiful, but there’s no soul. So here we try to make sure that everything we put on the plate has a purpose and plays a part in the final flavor of the dish. That’s really a priority for me. Achieving perfection with all the small elements is what really makes a dish stand out.”
On the special menu for our dinner are a number of Chef Henrique’s signature dishes from Alma restaurant, including Tuna Tataki with vegetable escabeche and tomato tartare; Bacalhau ‘a Bras’ with slow cooked egg yolk and onion puree; and a favourite, 24-hour slow-cooked Suckling Pig with sweet potato puree, pak choy and orange. And for desert, an irresistible Chocolate bombe with salted caramel and hazelnut ice-cream.
“Tuna Tataki was a dish I did when I won chef of the year in 2005. It was my entrée and it’s a dish that blends very Portuguese cooking with escabeche – a pepper, onion and carrot mixture with vinegar and sugar – which was a traditional way to preserve fish in the past.
“And the Suckling Pig has been one of my signature dishes for 15 years and appeals a lot to Chinese guests,” he notes.
Chef Henrique developed an interest in cooking from an early age, but it was only when he moved to live in the US that he realized he could make a career being a professional chef. He studied at the Pennsylvania Institute of Culinary Arts in the US, and later worked at the Park Lane Hotel in London and at the Sheraton on the Park in Sydney, Australia. Returning to Portugal, he continued to work in high end hotel restaurants and was recognized in 2005 as ‘Chef Cozinheiro do Ano’.
The award provided a stepping stone for his career as he embarked on opening his own restaurants and appearing in series of cooking shows on Portuguese TV – Ingrediente Secreto (‘Secret Ingredient’) – greatly boosting his public recognition.
With two Michelin stars under his belt, Chef Henrique began looking for opportunities to expand his presence internationally, and Macau was a logical place to begin.
“I think out of all the possible international locations, Macau was the one that made more sense to me. Obviously with Macau’s links to Portugal, it’s a great starting point for an international venture, and with Sands in particular,” he comments.
“Another reason is that I love Asia and I have introduced a lot of Asian flavours into my cooking in the past, probably because of my time in Australia where I was exposed to a lot of fusion cuisine, so I always like to use lemongrass and ginger. Even when I cook Portuguese food, I tend to blend some of these ingredients.”
So are there any local ingredients he particularly likes to use in his dishes?
“I love choy sam. It’s the kind of green that suits the Portuguese palate because we eat a lot of greens as well. We have a particular green called grelos that is very similar to choy sam. The texture is exactly the same, so that’s one ingredient that I’ve adopted and use quite a lot at Chiado.”
And while it’s still early days for Chiado, Chef Henrique has ambitious designs for the future.
“There’s great potential and opportunities for restaurants in Macau, and still room for growth. We want to establish ourselves as the best Portuguese restaurant in Macau and then maybe a Michelin star in the future. I don’t discard that possibility.”
Shop 2206, Level 2, Sands Cotai Central
Lunch: 12:00pm – 3:00pm
Dinner: 6:00pm – 11:00pm
Reservations: 8113 8988
