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It’s an excellent meal at Palace Garden Cantonese restaurant at Grand Lisboa Palace御花園. I wanted to come for a long time, after swinging by quickly without sitting down few years back. Finally made my visit last weekend and the experience definitely lives up and beyond my expectations. I would say its quality is way ahead of many other Chinese restaurants listed on Michelin Starred or Asia top 50 restaurants in Macau I tried. We came here for a dinner before the Alan Walker concert. Hence, we picked few dishes from the a-la carte menu due to time constraint. We ordered four dishes in total.Amuse bouche: we were greeted with a roselle-based cold drink and a crab tarte with some mint mixed in it and salmon roe on top. Both were refreshing to start the meal. The mint added to the crab tarte added another layer of freshness. First course: Peony King Tiger Prawn 牡丹虎蝦球. This is the 玻璃蝦球 recipe, added red prawn bisque as sauce to amplify the overall prawn flavor of the dish. The dish was beautifully presented. The tiger prawn was cooked to the perfect temperature. I have a slight preference on the more traditional way of using a thin slice of Jinhua ham to 提鮮 without sauce, so that the focus of the dish remains at the center tiger prawn piece instead of the sauce. However, the red prawn bisque was a nice fusion way to present the recipe with more layers of prawn flavor, although it did compete a bit with the tiger prawn 玻璃蝦球 in terms of flavor.Second course: yellow croaker bisque欖仁菊花黃魚羹 / double boiled herbal fish soup 藥材龍躉魚湯: we ordered different soup dish. My portion was the fish bisque, it’s quite interesting, like a fish version of Cantonese snake soup 蛇羹, a lot of natural flavor from both the fish and herbs cooked to a perfect thickness for Cantonese bisque. My partner’s portion of double boiled soup tasted soothing too.Third course: Lamb rack roasted with Sichuan pepper. It’s a very generous portion for a fine Chinese restaurant (perhaps we only had 2 pax sharing the dish). It’s nicely seasoned and tendered. We particularly enjoyed the first few pieces as they were so juicy and tendered, though the subsequent pieces dried up a bit after idling on the table in an aircon room.Fourth course: homemade beancurd simmered with sea urchin and other seafood. The dish was soooooo good! It’s a simple dish with with many good ingredients combined. The homemade beancurd was freshly made from the kitchen from scratch, packed with intense soybean flavor (like a nice fresh soymilk - solid version). And the chef went all in with bufen uni, local 水蟹 meat, scallop, etc. Lastly, we finished the meal with a small bite of black sesame roll to complete our dinnerI would definitely come back again to try other dishes on the menu. It’s a very enjoyable dinner, the beautifully decorated dining room and very nice food. I must say the service at the Palace restaurant was impeccable, from booking, reception, food ordering and explanation. I will definitely come back next time when I visit Macau. …Read More

We came for a late dinner. Seated by the window. Nice opened street view of the bustling 鵝頸橋, but fellow curious walker-by occasionally stared into what we were having 😅We ordered the 2 people set menu which was of great value - HKD 1788 for two with 4 seafood courses.First course: Mantis shrimp in yellow wine. This was our first time trying this recipe. Quite interesting. The roe was cooked to a nice texture. Yellow wine was well infused into the mantis shrimp. We still prefer 避風塘 more, but this less conventional cooking way is special and worth a try. Second course: 火焰奄仔蟹. The roe is creamy. The shell was burnt to really crispy and fairly easy to debone. Fairly nice.Third course: 薑蔥筒蠔 in claypot. This is our favorite dish of the evening. The oysters were meaty, fresh and juicy, cooked to the optimal temperature, with crispy edges and fresh meat. The seasoning was simple yet excellent. It’s a very big portion. We were both very happy with this dish. On a side note, this was not on the regular set menu, but substituting a shellfish dish which wasn’t available. Fourth course: baked lobster with fried rice. This was a disappointing dish. The lobster was dried and some pieces were even rubbery. It was similar to some mass market 酒樓 set menu type of quality. I would have expected more from a seafood restaurant.Overall, we found three out of four dishes were overly focused on being instagrammable. There is room to improve on cooking methods to maximize the flavor of the ingredients (and to get the temperature right at the very least). The claypot oysters, on the other hand, was simple but at its best. Anyhow, it’s good value, we aren’t asking for too much. On a separate note, the wine recommendation was average. We described what we asked for the bottle we wanted, and the server tried recommending every table with the same wine, a bit of a hard sell, anyhow, it’s a cheap bottle. Better not ask for the server’s recommendation and go with what you like.…Read More

I will give 4 stars as a fine Cantonese restaurant, but probably have room to improve as a Michelin starred level restaurant.We had a tasting menu created by the chef for the day. First we were welcomed by a small cup of tea and a small bite (節瓜釀蝦蒲) that I didn’t take a picture.The first formal course was the infamous baked stuffed crab shell 釀蟹蓋 with pickles. 好足料 , top notch in such Cantonese recipe, though the strong seasoning covered the natural crab flavor a bit. Overall still very well done. The pickle was well made and beautifully presented to balance the richness of the crab.The second course was a double boiled soup with fish maw, gorgon fruits and something. As good as you would imagine for classic high end Cantonese restaurant double boiled soup. We like it for the natural flavor from double boiling. The third course was a fish dish - braised grouper, with some eggplant at the bottom. Nothing special and not that memorable .The fourth dish and also our favorite dish of the night - roast pigeon. Very crispy skin and very juicy meat, very well done.The fifth dish was the braised abalone with pomelo skin. Braised abalone was the usual affair. The highlight was the pomelo skin, the softness of the pomelo skin absorbed all the essence in the sauce.The last savory dish for me was the barbecue pork with prawn roe noodle. The server spent so much time to explain the lychee wood burning of the barbecue pork that hyped up all the expectations , but my portion was dry and at best mediocre unfortunately, the lychee wood scent wasn’t the best combination to bbq pork in my opinion. That said, the prawn row noodle was full of flavor and I finished the whole plate even I was quite full already. The dinner was wrapped up with a palate cleanser in between the savory and sweet dishes, then followed by a fruit platter, Chinese sweets and a dessert cart. The fruits were of very high quality. I also like the almond dessert and the orange-infused chocolate.Overall, this is a high quality Cantonese meal. I will come back for the pigeon, and probably try the dim sum during lunch hour next time. Lastly, the sommelier served the wine very well, constantly checking the temperature to ensure it was right. …Read More