The Lisboa Hotel in Macau, which looks like an unlikely cross between a wedding cake and a bird cage, improbably enough houses one of Asia's most exclusive and inventive restaurants, a nine-table marvel of Louis XV furnishings.

In a city dominated by spectacularly cheap-and-cheerful Macanese cuisine, it is a symbol that gaming tycoon Stanley Ho is serious about staying up with the arriviste Las Vegas competition that is mushrooming around the former Portuguese enclave.

To do so, in 2001, Ho's nephew Alan rounded up Joel Robuchon, named France's chef of the century - the last century - by the Gault-Millau Restaurant Guide in Paris prior to his retirement from the French culinary scene in 1996.

Robuchon has told various news media that he didn't even know where Macau was when he made the decision to open the restaurant. He still doesn't spend a lot of time there, joining a flock of other celebrity chefs to fly into Asian cities a few times a year to correct the menu, see and be seen.

Nonetheless, a dinner at Robuchon a Galera will convince you that he pays plenty of attention to the menu and to the decor. Entering the third-floor restaurant is like entering a different world. Somebody at the Lisboa ransomed a considerable amount of winnings taken from the pockets of mainland gamblers thronging Stanley Ho's tables in order to stock, furnish and open it.

The tableware is Cristofle. The porcelain is Bernardaud from Limoges. The crystal is Reidel. The tureens are silver. The wine list is an astonishing 35 pages long and features more than 2,500 wines, most of them classic French, although there is a healthy sprinkling of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Australian and American ones as well. If you hit it big at the gaming tables, there are plenty of magnums of Petrus.

This is a formidable restaurant. Only the twinkling lights in the shape of stars in the ceiling are left of the old Galera, the undistinguished continental restaurant that used to occupy the space.

A French chef friend who took the Super Cat up from Hong Kong to reconnoitre the competition's terrain said enviously: ``If there are 31 points on the plate, then Joel Robuchon will hit all 31 points.''

Robuchon's Paris restaurants earned him a sky full of Michelin stars before he retired. Once known as among the most traditional of French chefs, his ouevre underwent a serious change after he opened a restaurant in Tokyo, ultimately taking on a distinctly Asian cast. Nonetheless, as an example of his clout on the Francophile culinary front, his return to the Paris scene in 2004 with an innovative new restaurant, LAtelier de Joel Robuchon, was greeted by headlines in French newspapers screaming ``Robuchon returns!''

Other Hong Kong chefs say Robuchon runs a tight ship in the Macau restaurant despite his quarterly visits. Robuchon a Galera's staff, headed by Francky Semblat as resident chef, all trained in three-star Parisian restaurants.

Service is crisp, although the fact is Robuchon a Galera is usually virtually empty, except on weekends and holidays when Hong Kong tourists show up for dinner. Only three tables were filled on a recent weekday visit. The vast grind market of eager gamblers flocking to the gaming tables aren't interested in wading through a series of courses of leisurely French cuisine and wine when a bowl of noodles is much cheaper and gets them back to the tables to fill Stanley Ho's pockets quicker.

They should have patience.

Robuchon a Galera is pricey, but it isn't as pricey as Hong Kong's more expensive establishments by far. And it is difficult to think of a more innovative menu.

One way to sample the diversity is to try your choice of the 16 small dishes on a degustation menu for HK$1,400 per person - it starts out with Osetra caviar in a fine jelly with a cauliflower cream that should make most diners forget that, in practical terms, cauliflower is not really an edible vegetable.

Robuchon and Semblat often cross the line from classic French cuisine into something approaching fusion - a word that seems to be detested by almost every chef in the world but Wolfgang Puck - with, for instance, sea urchin cooked with a fennel reduction or fettuccini with hairy crab roe and white truffle cream.

A recent foray into the menu skipped the degustation for a series of individual dishes that began with langoustine croustillante en papillote aux feuelles de basilic - beheaded and de-tailed scampi, wrapped in a stunningly delicate, crispy edible rice paper imported from Africa and cooked in a process that Semblat won't reveal.

Robuchon has transferred some of his signature dishes from Paris, including marinated warm mashed potatoes, topped with a tomato confit, parmesan cheese and slices of white truffle. Another is a mille-feuille of tomato layered with crabmeat.

These are dishes that simply mate together ingredients in ways that diners in Asia don't normally experience. There is a white truffle ``congee'' that includes crusty frog's legs and sauteed asparagus. A pan-fried fillet of Amadai, a Japanese fish similar to mullet, comes with the skin almost as crispy as a potato crisp, sitting in a pool of red wine sauce.

Le porcelet roti avec sa caillette aux epices et un mousseline de brocolis a la truffe - roasted baby pig - delivers tiny pork chops no bigger than one's thumb, accompanied by a spicy ball of stuffing and a mousseline of broccoli and white truffles.

Across the Pearl River Delta in Hong Kong, Alain Ducasse, the celebrated nine-star nouvelle chef who opened Spoon in the Intercontinental Hotel, is usually referred to as the more contemporary of the two rivals, while Robuchon is thought of as more traditional.

But a night in Macau at Robuchon's table makes that a difficult proposition to take on board. It's a gamble - a better one, probably, than the one downstairs at the green felt tables. Reese.Deveaux@globalchina.com