MGM to bring Cotai ‘more choices and variety’

Chef Mitsuharu Tsumura (3rd from left) and Grant Bowie (3rd from right) pose for a picture with other participants of yesterday’s event

MGM China’s second property in Macau, and the first one in Cotai, will be ready to open at the end of next year. The property is expected to complement the gaming operator’s offer in the territory, according to the CEO and executive director of MGM China, Grant Bowie, who spoke to media yesterday on the sidelines of the announcement of MGM Cotai’s first restaurant.
“We have not changed our strategy in any way for this new property. Our idea was, and is always, to present more choices and variety to Macau,” Grant Bowie told the Times. “We are an entertainment company and entertainment for us is creating art from science.”
The MGM China CEO and executive director says that the critical point of achieving success is to study and analyze the market, and to “bring to consumers something that they want and like.” That is MGM’s aim of with its new property in Cotai, and also with some adjustments that are being made in the peninsula property.
The food and beverage (F&B) sector is the starting point of this idea, and Mr Bowie justifies this focus with the interest from customers in F&B: “We want to bring new cuisines but not one-off cuisines – not something you try once or for just special occasions, but something to create stories about.”
“We learned from the Macau property that there are a few things where we clearly stand out, and we will transport that to the new property. We don’t want to stand out because we are louder; we want to stand- out because we are more distinctive.”
According to Mr Bowie, the layout of the new F&B area aims to create different stories and different environments in a resemblance to what already happens in MGM Macau. “Some people like to dine in, and others prefer to dine out,” he said. “We want to have some consistency between the two properties and that happens through the levels of quality, intensity, and opportunity for social interaction, not by repeating the same experiences,” the CEO said.
With all this in mind, MGM has unveiled the first of the pack, bringing “AJI” to Macau – a Peruvian Nikkei cuisine restaurant headlined by renowned chef Mitsuharu Tsumura.
Mr Bowie explained that the opening has been in the planning for over two and a half years, bearing in mind that Peruvian and Chinese people have some similarities such as the fact that both come from ancient civilizations.
“I think Chinese people will like it a lot. It has a similar appearance and some ingredients from Japanese food, but with different flavors and many of them resembling Chinese cuisine, such as the use of chili as in Sichuan cuisines, citrus, starches and beans,” Grant Bowie commented.
Peruvian cuisine, and especially Nikkei, is an emerging culinary trend around the globe. Chinese tourists know that already because they are also traveling the world and telling those stories when they get back home.
Hans Hordijk, MGM China’s vice president of F&B, reminds the public that Peru has a huge Chinese community of about 2.5 million people. According to him, “These people tried this food already and the feedback from them is great, so we can see it being a very controlled risk to bring this experience to Macau.”
Regarding what else people can expect from MGM Cotai, Mr Bowie was tight-lipped for the moment, but added that there will certainly be an “all-day dining environment that can provide a buffet for breakfast and a little bit of something for everybody.”
“Since we are in Macau and in ‘Canton’ province, there will be a Cantonese cuisine restaurant too,” which will provide what people from this area are used to calling “confort food” but with some modifications. “Among other features, we have one restaurant that we deliberately said we did not want to classify as relating to any one cuisine. We see it instead as a venue that keeps changing and that restaurant is designed as a series of dining rooms for that purpose, because it is about the social interaction and different emotional experiences.” What is certain is that all the culinary experiences will have a different “twist” in order for people to be able to remember “how you made them feel.” RM