Every chef remembers the dish that stopped them in their tracks and made them fall in love with food. For Jaakko Sorsa, Executive Chef at FINDS in Hong Kong, it was his Grandmother Ida’s meatballs.

Chef Hector Costa spoons a taste of paella to his lips, nods to himself, and shakes on a confident dose of salt. Hector’s paellera—the traditional round, shallow pan used to cook the dish—holds enough paella to feed thirty people.

The kitchen at Cepage in Hong Kongis mysteriously calm. It’s not empty; there are lots of chefs; they’re all working hard. How can it be so tranquil? Executive Chef Sébastien Lepinoy notices my puzzlement. “More than half the members of my team are women,” he says. “It changes the dynamics of the kitchen in a very good way.”

I love it when I walk into a restaurant and know instantly that there’ll be no need to consult a menu—instead, I’ll just order whatever it is that smells so good. That’s exactly what happens when I step for the first time into Macau’s Restaurante Litoral.

When it comes to cooking with the exquisite white truffle, Chef Umberto Bombana of 8½ Otto e Mezzo BOMBANA in Hong Kong believes less is more. “With the white truffle, you don’t have to do too much,” he tells me. “Start with something simple and don’t over complicate it.”

In Macau, everyone has their go-to egg tart shop. When my sweet tooth starts making demands, I head to Coloane to pay homage to Lord Stow.

Standing atop the Grand Lisboa Hotel on my birthday, 43 stories high, with a magnificent 360° view of Macau, I feel like a king surveying his empire. I’m in Robuchon au Dôme, in a dining room that is the epitome of opulence. The platinum dining plates are from Bernardaud; the silverware is Christophle. The glasses are Reidel, the crystal floor lamps Baccarat. A dazzling fifteen-meter chandelier, made of more than 130,000 pieces of Swarovski crystal, cascades from the ceiling and illuminates a vintage Steinway piano on the floor below.

StarWorld Executive Chef Joe Chan has a new best friend in the kitchen.

“The sugar, salt and spices have all been pushed aside,” he jokes. “Right now, it’s all about the honey.”

After taking my first bite of Inagiku’s crispy shrimp tempura, all conversation at the table fades to white noise. I close my eyes, lean back in my chair and let the ethereally light morsels take center stage in my consciousness. The tempura is so good, so perfectly crisp and flavorful, it’s a little hard to believe it’s real—it’s almost as if I’m having an incredibly vivid food dream.

According to Chef Chatsorn Pratoomma, the secret to making a killer pomelo salad is, counter intuitively, to avoid the juiciest fruit. “To eat a pomelo by itself, a juicy one would be great,” she says, “but if you want to make a delicious salad with different ingredients mixed together, choose the type with white flesh which is drier in texture.”