A decade after its Eiffel Tower replica first lit up Cotai, The Parisian Macao is throwing a birthday – a celebrity-chef dinner series, a Little Prince takeover and a drone show. Here are some of the ways to plan a weekend around it.
Ten years of ‘Paris in Macao’: Inside The Parisian’s birthday celebrations
On 13 September 2016, a half-scale Eiffel Tower switched on over Cotai for the first time. At 162 metres it was never going to be mistaken for the original, but that was rather the point: a piece of Paris you could walk up to, ride the lift up, and photograph against a Macao sunset.
Ten years later it is one of the most recognisable silhouettes on the Cotai Strip, and the integrated resort behind it has grown into a full French fantasy of hotel towers, gardens and a mall built to mimic Parisian avenues.
This September, The Parisian Macao turns 10, and rather than dwell on the “remember when”, it is marking the decade with a season of things to do. Across late summer and early autumn the property is running its Celebrity Chefs’ Table series, handing several of its public spaces over to a beloved French storybook, and a drone show lighting the sky through the celebrations. Here is what is on.
A celebrity-chef series
The centrepiece is Celebrity Chefs’ Table, a run of weekend chef residencies at Le Cristal Parisian – a pavilion built for the anniversary on Level 6, with a clear view of the Eiffel Tower replica. It runs from 7 August to 13 September and gathers chefs from Macao, Hong Kong, Hangzhou, Shanghai and France, with dinners at 2,388 patacas a person (plus a 10% service charge) and two seatings a night.
The opening weekends have already passed: Twelve25 from Macao (chef Franco Fong), then Hangzhou’s L’éclat 19 (Greg Tao) and Hong Kong’s two-Michelin-starred L’Envol (Hwang Byeonghyen) – the last two from Chef’s Concept Limited, a group whose pedigree draws on close to 30 Michelin stars. “To me, The Parisian Macao is like a little France in Asia,” Fong said of the setting.
From 28 to 30 August, Rain Qu – champion of the first season of the TV cooking contest Chef of China – serves a “dragon and horse spirit” dish of lobster with satay and ten-year-aged tangerine peel, one year for each of the resort’s ten years.
Hong Kong’s Eddy Leung, founder of Chef Studio by Eddy and president of the Hong Kong Chefs Association, takes a solo night on 4 September, then a four-hands dinner on 5 and 6 September with Ronald Shao, who once led the kitchen of a three-Michelin-starred Chinese restaurant in Macao. The series closes from 11 to 13 September with a Michelin-starred French chef whose menu takes its cue from champagne.
Book early: these are short runs, and seats at each are limited.
The Little Prince checks in
While the grown-ups are at dinner, the resort hands a good part of its public realm over to Le Petit Prince. Its anniversary collaboration, An Interstellar Dream with Le Petit Prince, runs from early August to 11 October: The Parisian’s version of the story sees the Little Prince follow a star to Macao, where beneath the Eiffel Tower he meets Bao Bao, the resort’s Parisian-born master pastry chef, and the two become friends – “Bao Bao and the Little Prince: a starry night at The Parisian Macao”.
In practice that means a series of immersive installations to walk through and photograph, a themed afternoon tea at the Parisian Café, and collectible merchandise around the property. For families, there is a summer adventure programme in which children collect stamps from the installations and redeem a gift – a neat way to keep younger travellers busy between pool sessions. It’s a French tale with cross-generational pull, which suits a resort trying to be equally good at a romantic weekend and a family one.
A birthday in the sky
The celebrations aren’t only at the table. From 7 August to 13 September the resort stages a 10th anniversary drone show over the Cotai Strip every Friday to Sunday night, with three showings – at 7:45, 9 and 10:15 pm. More than 1,000 drones light up the dark to trace Parisian icons overhead, from the Eiffel Tower to hot-air balloons, above the real thing. Le Jardin, the French garden at the foot of the tower, is the best open-air spot to watch, though the show can be called off in poor weather.
Better still, you needn’t choose between dinner and the show. Le Cristal Parisian’s clear roof means guests at the Celebrity Chefs’ Table can watch the drones fill the sky straight from the table – dinner and spectacle at once.
If you are making a weekend of it, the rest of the property fills in easily. The Eiffel Tower observation decks give the best elevated view of the Cotai Strip; Aqua World and the pool deck handle the daytime; La Chine, inside the tower, is the grown-up dinner if you have not booked into the series; and an Eiffel Tower Room lets you watch the tower’s nightly light show from your own window.
Ten years in, the pitch is much the same as it was in 2016 – a slice of Paris you can reach in an afternoon – only now there is a birthday attached.
Where: The Parisian Macao, Estrada do Istmo, Cotai, Macao
When: Celebrity Chefs’ Table: 7 August – 13 September at Le Cristal Parisian; An Interstellar Dream with Le Petit Prince: Early August – 11 October; Drone show 7 August – 13 September, Fridays to Sundays at 7:45, 9 and 10:15 pm
Website: parisianmacao.com
