Macau embraces vegetarian trend with new restaurants

Less than two years ago, the king of haute cuisine, Alain Ducasse, announced he was eliminating red meat from his flagship restaurant at the Plaza Athénée Hotel in Paris in a bold move to focus more on vegetarian dishes. One newspaper headline screamed, “Is this the end of haute cuisine”? Others merely saw it as an acknowledgment that vegetables have long been overlooked. 

Meanwhile, top French chef Joël Robuchon, who oversees the three-Michelin-star restaurant Robuchon au Dôme in Macau, declared in an interview with The Telegraph:  “The cuisine of the next 10 years will be vegetarian.”

The mainland is on top of this emerging culinary trend, with chef Tony Lu’s Fu He Hui in Shanghai considered to be one of the most renowned vegetarian restaurants in the world. The restaurant is praised for its mastery in serving delicious meat-free Shanghainese food. 

All this suggests that vegetarian dishes, once so frequently criticised by food critics for being bland and boring, could have more to offer after all. 

"A lot of people who make assumptions about vegetarians think that you go into a place and you’re served salad every time,” says Marisa Randles, who with her husband Aaron owns The Blissful Carrot, a vegetarian restaurant in Macau. “But I think our eatery proves that it’s good food, period, and it’s not necessarily items that you might think are vegetarian, like bibimbaps, curries, tacos. There’s so much variety on our menu.” 

Originally from the US, the couple came to Macau so Aaron could perform as a diver in The House of Dancing Water. They had the idea to open The Blissful Carrot on Taipa island after struggling to find places that served purely vegetarian dishes. 

“There were some Chinese vegetarian restaurants,” Marisa says, “but sometimes with those you still don’t really know what is going into the food, or if they’re using MSG or thickeners or animal products in the sauces. So that’s why we wanted to open a place whereby people can trust that the ingredients are as organic as possible.”

Since opening The Blissful Carrot two years ago, the pair has been pioneering more environmentally and health-conscious methods of sourcing and consuming food in Macau. They import most of their vegetables from a farm in Thailand so that they can ensure produce is as fresh and organic as they like it. 

“It’s really nice because everything comes in super fresh, it’s direct from the farm and there’s no middlemen in between,” Marisa says. “We find out at the beginning of every week what is ready to harvest, and then our order usually leaves the farm in Thailand and arrives here on Thursday.”