Gastronomy | Spanish tapas meets French cuisine at Aux Beaux Arts

Well-known Spanish tapas meets refined French cuisine these days at MGM Macau’s Aux Beaux Arts. American chef Ryan Poli joins in-house chef de cuisine Elie Khalife until March 8 to recreate the lively atmosphere of tapas bars while seamlessly blending Spanish ingredients with French cuisine essences.
Yes, there are crowd favourites, such as jamon iberico, patatas bravas, and Spanish tomato bread with iberico cheese. But the chefs are also keen on providing refined and elaborate dishes to capture clients’ imagination: imagine a finely cooked scallop embedded in a famous Spanish ajo blanco – a cold soup merging the flavors of almonds, grapes, celery, croutons, and olive oil; or perhaps a cured foie gras pintxo (small snack typically eaten in bars in Spain) with cherry compote and black pepper.
Chef Ryan Poli, who hails from Chicago, spent considerable time in Spain and was inspired by that concept of bringing the quintessentially Spanish habit of eating in bars abroad. Poli said, “The whole idea of doing tapas here was trying to capture the feeling and excitement when you walk into a tapas bar in Spain.”
“When you walk in there, it’s a bustling kind of restaurant. Things are happening; people are eating and talking, so I wanted to capture that experience,” he added.
Together with chef Khalife, Poli came up with a menu that would not only capture the traditional flavors of Spanish tapas, but would also take inspiration from the finest French cuisine: “We wanted to do things family-style; but wanted to make something a little bit more refined where you have an individual dish you can taste from. So we fused the two ideas.”
Speaking to reporters at a tasting dinner last week, chef Poli highlighted some of his favorite dishes within the menu: shrimp a la plancha, cooked in sea salt; and scallop in ajo blanco. “I think the shrimp cooked in salt is one of the most symbolic dishes, as it really reminds me of working in the tapas bars in Spain. It’s a really great product and you do very little to it (…) to me, that kind of represents what Spanish [cuisine] is in a very simplistic manner,” he said, adding that the scallop dish, on the other hand, is a bit more complex.
The menu features a “Madrid meets Paris” series, which includes a sea urchin pintxo, an oyster with basil sorbet, or a sangria ice cream with green apple, among others. Tapas from Sevilla, like a pan-seared foie gras brioche burger, are also on the menu.
For those keen on developing their own tapas recipes at home, chef Poli did not miss out on giving a few tips: “Keep it simple and fresh, and just have fun! Being Spanish and being at a tapas restaurant is all about living in the moment, having fun, having some cervezas [beers], and don’t make it too difficult,” he said, adding that one should include at least some sort of jamon, Spanish cheese, smoked pimento (capsicum) and paprika.
The full tapas menu, which will be available until March 8, costs MOP588. A la carte dishes are also offered with prices ranging from MOP68 (desserts) to MOP298 (for the Madrid Meets Paris series).