Food & Beverage | Jak’s Kitchen puts itself on par with top restaurants in integrated resorts

From left to right: Jeff Yen, Sharon Yeo, Ron Kiat, Kai Schubert and Amy Qu

With the aim of providing guests with competitively- priced quality Western cuisine outside of integrated resorts, two entrepreneurs opened Jak’s Kitchen in One Oasis earlier this year.

Aside from offering set lunches and dinners to customers, the restaurant is also collaborating with winemakers to provide patrons with a tailored menu which has wines paired with dinner items.

For the first time, Jak’s Kitchen has collaborated with New Zealand winemaker Kai Schubert to pair its dinners with selections from Schubert’s wine, including its famed Schubert Block B Pinot Noir 2014.

According to the winemaker, the company boasts a lovely Pinot Noir, which is a complex red wine that goes with a variety of dishes.

In Europe, Schubert noted that these wines are commonly served with mushrooms or chicken.

“More often in Asia, there’s a lot of dishes you can see such as curries, Peking duck, and such, which work beautifully with Pinot Noir. There are a lot of options and it’s quite adaptive in that sense,” said Schubert.

During the weekend, the full- house restaurant presented a six-course menu, starting with Norweigan salmon carpaccio with caper berries and ending with gorgonzola and figs.

The restaurant aims to hold more wine paired dinners in collaboration with foreign winemakers, particularly those from Portugal, to establish a community in the peninsula, along with its loyal guests from Macau and Taipa.

Restaurant owners Amy Qu and Jeff Yen opened the restaurant in February, serving continental European cuisine in a casual-yet-quality dining environment.

The partners noted that it is difficult to find high quality western restaurants outside casinos, noting that it can be frustrating for locals to visit a restaurant in the region’s integrated resorts during the weekend.

“Our opinion is that most of the good western restaurants are located inside the casinos and we want to provide other experiences so that customers don’t have to go to a casino to enjoy a good western restaurant,” explained Yen.

As the restaurant is located in One Oasis’ The Veranda, attracting customers to the venue has been a challenge. Currently, the entrepreneur says that some 70 percent of their weekend customers come from the other two peninsulas.

Jak’s Kitchen is looking to serve a fresher Mediterranean European style of food – dishes that are “seasonal, fresh and good quality.”

Ron Kiat, chef at the restaurant, assured that most of the ingredients used are imported from Australia and the U.S. Kiat noted that the team has been instructed to serve the best quality of food at a reasonable price point.

“We have same quality as hotels but at a reasonable price. Compared with hotels, you need to pay for service and atmosphere. It’s the same here, it’s cozy and relaxed,” Kiat said with confidence.

Meanwhile, restaurant manager Sharon Yeo said that the restaurant prioritizes building relationships with its guests, adding that the restaurant has already acquired loyal guests in a short time since opening the business.

Yeo said that the team is confident in growing the number of its current customers.

Yeo also noted that acquiring goods from suppliers remains a challenge, as not all suppliers deliver in the peninsula, while others do not cater to small restaurants.

“We’re only a small operator, unlike in hotels where they order in big amount. […] Even when we order up to MOP20,000 they won’t deliver and say it’s out of their area,” Yeo explained.

Meanwhile, the owners admit that acquiring a license to operate and meeting quotas to hire foreign talent remain the most challenging aspect of opening the business.

Macau aims to be listed as one of UNESCO’S ‘Gastronomic City’, having submitted an application to the UNESCO Network of Creative Cities (UNCC) earlier this year.

However, the owners believe that the restrictions and limitations placed upon Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) may reduce the quality and service able to be provided by local enterprises.

Both Qu and Yen expressed that the government should give way on blue card issues and policies as there is not enough to work for local SMEs.

“I think the government should [easily] allow SMEs to hire foreign people. Everybody knows there’s a lack of manpower. More locals must be competitive [because] the market will tell which people it needs,” Yen stated.

The co-owner added that no local enterprise would want to hire employees who are not competitive enough in the market, and thus hoped that the government would encourage locals to strive for great service in the workplaces.

A source also told the Times that the government has put significant emphasis on supporting local SMEs, but it handballs its duty to support these enterprises to gaming operators.

To small restaurant owners, obtaining approval for licensing applications is a core problem rather than raising capital, as the government currently offers up to MOP600,000 in interest-free loans to local entrepreneurs.

“The free mortgage is only for young people. We need support from the government in the form of faster processing of licenses and quotas,” Qu lamented.

However, the two entrepreneurs remain confident that these issues will not impact the quality of dishes they serve, but rather, they will aim to continually maximize the quality of food at ‘the best price.’  LV