Monumental Morpheus
Morpheus is Melco Resorts & Entertainment’s brand-new yet already iconic hotel in City of Dreams Macau. Its chairman and CEO Lawrence Ho dreamed up the hotel, which was named after the Greek god of dreams.
The 40-story hotel reportedly cost $1.1 billion. Ho said, “We built a landmark for the city and an icon for Asia.” It is the world’s first free-form exoskeleton, which reduces the need for internal structural support. The number of columns is reduced and since there are no columns supporting the exoskeleton, this creates large open areas used for the hotel lobby and other public areas. Executive vice president, chief marketing and brand officer Frederic Jean-Marie Winckler said the building’s tons of structural steel and thousands of square meters of aluminum cladding are what hold the monolithic building together.
Morpheus, which has 770 rooms including six duplex villas and three pool villas, was designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Dame Zaha Hadid, who died two years before the hotel’s completion. Its interiors were designed by Los Angeles-based
Peter Remedios, who was also responsible for the interiors of the Mandarin Oriental Landmark in Hong Kong, the Grand Hyatt in Tokyo and the Four Seasons in New York.
Morpheus has a state-of-the-art gym as well as a spa where one would reach after passing a snow garden (with simulated snow). The rooms have the most comfortable beds with sheets and pillowcases that boast a thousand thread count. And the toiletries are Hermés (Suites offer Acqua di Parma toiletries). Each room has a huge flatscreen television and a tablet to control everything from the lights and curtains to the room temperature. My travel mates were all excited about the room being equipped with a Dyson hairdryer, something that was of no use to me, who has no hair to dry!
This hotel is a food lover’s dream. Its pastries are made by patissier and chocolatier Pierre Hermé, named by Vogue USA as the “Picasso of Pastry” and was the “World’s Best Pastry Chef” of 2016 adjudged by The World’s Best 50 Restaurants guide. His creations are exclusively offered at the breakfast and room service menus of Morpheus. There is also a Pierre Hermé lounge at the hotel lobby.
One of the world’s most celebrated chefs Alain Ducasse has not just one but two restaurants — Voyages by Alain Ducasse, which creates dishes inspired from the celebrity chef’s various travels around the world; and the fine dining Alain Ducasse at Morpheus, which serves contemporary French cuisine. The Monegasque chef is one of only two chefs to hold 21 Michelin Stars throughout his career and is the first chef to own restaurants carrying three Michelin Stars in three cities.
The hotel’s Chinese restaurant Yi was also created by Zaha Hadid Architects. The restaurant’s porcupine-like enclosures that separate tables give diners a sense of privacy. Yi takes pride in not having a freezer so everything is served fresh!
There is also the Hadid-designed Club Lounge on the 30th floor where the buffet meals I ate were not as extensive as other hotels’ but the quality of food and the choices of what the lounge served were jaw dropping. Our first day buffet featured giant Hokkaido scallops, Alaskan King Crab legs, Cruzan crabs from the Philippines, mantis shrimp, a selection of oysters from Japan, Australia and France, carabineros (my all time favorite red shrimp from Spain), Japanese sea urchin — that was just the cold seafood section! The next day, Alain Ducasse at Morpheus not only opened its doors for us to taste its food but it also opened two 1.5-kilo cans of caviar and prepared more than a kilo of black truffles to slice or shave onto its delectable canapés.
Lawrence Ho opened the hotel last month and during the launch, two sets of elevators on each tower stopped operations to accommodate live musicians as each floor of the elevators had a box specially designed to hold a musician to play live music for the grand opening.
Guests were then transported to Grand Hyatt, another Melco property in City of Dreams Macau, for the gala dinner which featured dishes from Alain Ducasse, Yi, Jade Dragon (a Michelinstarred restaurant also in City of Dreams), and of course, a Pierre Hermé dessert.
We also had time to visit another Melco property, Studio City, where the Batman ride “The Dark Flight” is a must-go. The 4D simulated ride is at par with the world’s best rides and the queue is not as long as those in studio theme parks around the world. Also worth visiting in City of Dreams Macau is one of its Michelinstarred restaurants, The Tasting Room, where we had a special dinner prepared by its chef Fabrice Vulin.
Two nights in Morpheus was more than luxurious and opulent. It would definitely be a hard act to top.