Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa is pulling off a first: Michelin-starred Cantonese chef Ku Chi Fai will cook in the Maldives for the very first time, headlining the launch of the resort's new Masters of Food & Wine Series. He'll host two exclusive dinners on 2 and 5 October 2026 at the Island Grill, starting at 7:30 PM.
Chef Ku is the founder of The Beijing Kitchen, a restaurant that has held seven consecutive Michelin Stars and eight straight Black Pearl One-Diamond Awards. With more than forty years behind the wok, he's known for classical Cantonese technique with a contemporary touch — precise, ingredient-led cooking rather than flashy reinvention. His Hadahaa menu will be a six-course dinner paired with premium wines, built around themes of prosperity, family and culinary heritage to coincide with Chinese Golden Week, and drawing on Maldivian produce as well as Cantonese tradition.
The dinners open a longer programme at the resort, which runs from October 2026 through April 2027 under the banner "A MICHELIN-Starred Culinary Journey Through the Seasons." Each chapter pairs a seasonal moment with a guest chef, turning the usual one-off celebrity dinner format into something closer to a year-long calendar of food events on the island.
Tickets are priced at USD 249++ per person and reservations are open now, with the resort flagging limited seats in an intimate setting — worth booking early if a chef-led dinner is the reason you're choosing this atoll over another.
It's part of a wider run of culinary programming across Maldivian resorts this season. Sun Siyam Olhuveli, in South Malé Atoll, is hosting Kabita Singh — the creator behind Kabita's Kitchen, with roughly 14.6 million YouTube subscribers and a National Creators Award won in 2024 — for a live plant-forward Indian cooking session around International Chefs' Day on 20 October. Kuredhivaru Resort and Spa has its own lineup, including a Japanese-Peru-inspired cocktail dinner on 26 September with award-winning bartender Norihiko Furuse, an Oktoberfest celebration on 3 October with pork knuckle and pretzels, and family-friendly Halloween festivities from 30 to 31 October.
Why it matters: food-focused travel is no longer an afterthought in the Maldives, which has long sold itself on overwater villas and house reefs. A Michelin-starred chef cooking on an atoll — at a resort known for its remote, nature-first setting in Huvadhoo Atoll — gives food-motivated travellers a concrete reason to pick Hadahaa in early October, and the season-long series suggests more dates worth watching if Cantonese isn't your thing. If you're already planning a Golden Week trip or an autumn escape, timing your stay around one of these dinners is an easy upgrade to a beach holiday.
