A BANQUET room of the Lisboa Hotel in Macau looked like a cooking school. Chairs were pushed aside, and those not stacked, were positioned like a lecture hall.
In the centre of the room, waiters and chefs buzzed between six long tables and studied trays of utensils and ingredients, arranged with the detail of a surgeon's work table.
Six contestants in red-trimmed aprons were buoyed by looks and hand-gestures from the audience of well-wishers. A wall of ovens stood ready to glow red at the touch of a switch.
Welcome to the monthly Macanese Food Competition, where finalists have 90 minutes to transform ingredients into a Macanese speciality.
Earlier this month six cooks packed piles of seasoned crabmeat into crab shells, sand-blasted clean, to create one of Macau's most popular dishes, casquinha recheada no forno (baked crabmeat in the shell).
'The cooking contest was his idea,' explained the hotel spokesperson. 'My boss, Mr [Alan] Ho, likes good food. He's a gourmet.' He's also the Harvard-educated nephew of casino magnate Stanley Ho.
