Singer, film star, chef. Self-taught Tse has many strings to his bow, and he believes cooking has brought him closer to his parents, and making great dishes is easier than people think, as seen with his desserts at a Michelin dinner

The gala dinner at the Grand Hyatt Macau promised to be a sparkling affair. Called “A Night Among the Stars”, six chefs with 14 Michelin stars between them, including Alain Ducasse, served their dishes to 500 guests in a ballroom that was set up like a reality TV show, complete with a stage and screens suspended from the ceiling.

After six dishes had been served, there came dessert courtesy of Nicholas Tse Ting-fung, singer, actor and these days, #chef.

Guests who sampled his rose profiteroles with rose water and lychee jelly, dehydrated rose petals and caraway seed breadsticks thought they were passable, considering he made several hundred of them, but it was Tse’s performance that went viral.

He appeared on stage in a military-like uniform à la Michael Jackson complete with gold epaulettes. With intense concentration, he took two squeeze bottles, one with dark chocolate, the other white, and began frenetically making Jackson Pollock-like squirts on several boards, describing it as “chocolate graffiti”.