A ONCE IN A LIFETIME ROYAL DINING EXPERIENCE
Heads of state from my Queen Elizabeth to your Presidents Bush (both son and dad) have dined as guests of the Chinese leaders at the world famous exclusive Diaoyutai destination in Beijing. Now, for the first (and maybe only time) just 200 fortunate food fans here in Vegas will be able to taste some of the recipes dating back 800-years and kept in secret at the Forbidden City. It’s a seven-day feast fit for a king starting today and running until Feb. 13 in the Pearl restaurant at MGM. Lunches will run about $250 and dinners will be about $600 per person.
I was privileged to attend yesterday’s run-through of the ancient Chinese culinary tradition with the nine chefs and seven beautiful servers from the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse (the Chinese equivalent to Camp David), an exclusive retreat of Chinese royalty that has played host to 1,000 presidents, prime ministers, kings and queens.
Our MGM Grand President, Gamal Aziz made the deal as part of a contract with his new MGM Hospitality company that will partner with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a new MGM hotel currently under construction in Beijing.
“We are honored and delighted to have been chosen to host this most exclusive and time-honored tradition,” he said. “It is definitely a one of a kind experience for our guests.” The entire Chinese culinary team of nine star chefs and seven top servers, under top chef Hao Baoli, will stay on in Vegas until Feb. 22 as part of the cultural exchange program.
The best English-speaking server was Zhao Yidan (translates into English as “Jessica”) and she told me, “It is our very first time in Vegas and America. As servers we are selected from hotel management and hospitality schools all over our country. We are very proud to be selected because it is a very high honor. We have to have a standard height and we are judged on our personality and our appearance—yes, we have to be pretty. Before we arrived in Las Vegas we thought it would be a very hip city and very busy with lots of people and a lot of sights to see. It is more beautiful though than we thought. We like Las Vegas and we have already been to the Bellagio buffet and the Craftsteak restaurant. My favorite food now is steak!”
Jessica explained that each girl had brought three types of traditional slit-skirt server uniforms in yellow, white and pink.
MGM spared no expense in air freighting over 1,500 pounds of the custom-made China service plates, kitchen cookware, ingredients, displays and one horizontal harp! Although that cost north of $150,000, it was the extraordinary insurance costs for the rare royal tableware and décor that proved really expensive! You get an idea of the traditions behind the rare and exotic ingredients when you learn that the Shark’s Fin soup takes three days of preparation and the yellow truffled clear soup has to start being made at 2 a.m. every morning for that day’s service! The chefs tested 20 different kinds of American flours before they settled on one that would work for them.
In all, Chef Hao had over 2,000 recipes to pull from in the Forbidden City, and our 12-course meal was similar to the one served to both Presidents Bush and Queen Elizabeth. It included incredible and fabulous tasting dishes from the Ming, Quing and Jin dynasties: steamed duck in taro paste, assorted mushrooms in musk melon, chicken shaped bean paste pastry, cats-ear shaped macaroni with three delicacies in clear broth, pan-fried goose liver and a made-at-the-table “dragons whisker” noodle so thin as a strand it can be threaded through the eye of a needle!
Other dishes will include whole abalone in oyster sauce, pan-fried venison with garlic and chile, stir-fried lobster, sea cucumber roe in superior soup with desserts of persimmon-shaped dumplings and exotic fresh fruits. All are low in both sugar and sodium and high in protein with cuisine that is visually stunning and nutritionally holistic in a perfect balance of ying and yang, per olden-day instructions.
I asked if Chef Hao, who is regarded as the no.1 Eastern world chef, had heard of Chef Guy Savoy or Chef Joel Robuchon, who has a restaurant at MGM and is regarded as the Western world’s no.1 chef.
Through a translator he told me, “I’ve eaten at the Robuchon Paris restaurant and he is the great chef. He is coming here on Feb. 19 and we want to eat each other’s food.”
Chef Hao will also meet super starchefs Wolfgang Puck, Guy Savoy and Tom Colicchio on Saturday at the Keep Memory Alive Alzheimer’s Gala being held at the MGM, and Luxe Life will have photos of that historic summit-type meeting.