Chelsea Garden: Where to Eat in Cotai (4.9★)

Finding Level 1 of Londoner Grand

The Londoner is hard to miss. Its frontage copies the Houses of Parliament, clock tower included, and faces the Cotai Strip. Chelsea Garden is inside, on Level 1 of the Londoner Grand hotel. It is listed under the hotel’s name, so ask for Londoner Grand if the signs to the casino and shops start to blur together.

Most visitors get there by resort shuttle. These are the free buses Sands runs from:

• the Outer Harbour Ferry Terminal
• the Taipa Ferry Terminal
• Border Gate

The Venetian and The Parisian sit on the same side of the road, linked by indoor walkways. That means you can cross between all three without going outside, which matters in Macau’s humid summer.

What a 24-hour kitchen is good for

The schedule is the main selling point. Chelsea Garden is open around the clock, seven days a week. Plenty of Cotai restaurants close between lunch and dinner, and most stop serving long before the casino floors empty. This one doesn’t.

That makes it useful for:

• a late ferry or a delayed flight through Macau International Airport
• a meal after a show at the Cotai Arena in The Venetian
• breakfast at an hour your body clock insists is dinner

It is mid-range for a Cotai resort. That puts it well below the celebrity-chef dining rooms nearby and a step above the food courts in the Shoppes. The current menu and prices are posted at the restaurant, so check there rather than relying on secondhand lists.

Booking, paying and the service charge

Booking is rarely necessary. Chelsea Garden gets far less traffic than the big-name rooms in The Londoner, and with no closing time there is no last-orders crush. The only times worth a phone call are weekend evenings and public holidays, when Cotai fills with day-trippers from Hong Kong and the mainland.

Some local payment habits to know:

• Currency: prices are in Macanese patacas, but Hong Kong dollars are accepted almost everywhere in the resorts. Change usually comes back in patacas.
• Cards and mobile pay: major cards are standard in integrated resorts. Alipay and WeChat Pay are widely accepted too.
• Tipping: resort restaurants in Macau usually add a 10% service charge to the bill. Check the receipt, and don’t feel you need to tip on top of it.

Staff in Cotai resorts generally speak English as well as Cantonese and Mandarin. Ordering by pointing at the menu works fine.

Around it on the Cotai Strip

Plan the meal around the rest of your time on the Strip. Inside The Londoner, the replica Big Ben, the red phone boxes and the Crystal Palace atrium are free to walk through. Allow half an hour if you want photos.

From there, the indoor walkways bring you to the gondola canals of The Venetian in a few minutes. The half-scale Eiffel Tower at The Parisian lights up after dark. It has an observation deck; tickets are sold on site.

Across the road are City of Dreams and its striking Morpheus hotel by Zaha Hadid Architects. If you want something older and quieter, Taipa Village and Rua do Cunha are a short taxi ride north. Their Portuguese-era lanes make a good contrast to a late plate at Chelsea Garden.