Portuguese lunch @ Solmar, Macau

When we were in Macau last month for an overnight stay to attend a lavish gala dinner, I was keen to reacquaint myself with Portuguese food because I have very limited experience with the cuisine. The hotel staff was very helpful in recommending a few Portuguese restaurants, and then calling them up to find out if there was a table available for our family at short notice for Sunday lunch. Thankfully he only had to make two or three phone calls before getting one that had a table for us. According to the restaurant's website, Solmar was founded over 50 years ago as an exclusive club for politicians and business elites, but the food was so popular that the restaurant opened service to the public. The decor was simple and a bit outdated, but it was clean and comfortable, and service was polite, friendly and efficient. The menu had a good range of dishes, and the prices were affordable.

Portuguese-style interior decor:

Delicious warm rolls, made in-house, perfectly crusty with a fluffy interior:

Portuguese Baked Chicken, one of Solmar's signature dishes. It was mildly spiced like a curry, with olives, ham, sliced sausages and egg. Tasty, but a bit fiddly to eat with the chicken bones and the unpitted olives:

Seafood Rice, with a generous serving of large juicy prawns, mussels and squid in a sweet tomato sauce that tasted predominantly of ketchup. This was okay, and nothing like the seafood rice of another restaurant in Macau:

Serradurra, aka Sawdust Cake - a chilled Portuguese dessert made of sweetened cream layered with crushed biscuits. I really liked this one, light in taste and texture, not too sweet nor greasy, and not heavy on the stomach:

With our tummies full from a pleasant lunch, we made our way back home to Hong Kong.

Solmar Restaurant
512 Avenida da Praia Grande
Macau Peninsula, Macau
Tel. +85 3 2888 1881

Portuguese @ A Lorcha, Macau

We'd decided to focus on eating Portuguese food during our short weekend trip to Macau, and we lunched on our anniversary at A Lorcha, which is reputed among the locals to be the best casual Portuguese restaurant in town. The restaurant is also near a tourist spot and is listed in every guide books, so A Lorcha sees many tourists. We'd arrived shortly after the restaurant opened for lunch, and when we saw how quickly the restaurant filled up, I was glad that I'd made reservations a week prior. We were seated near the entrance and saw many people turned away at the door, and by 1:30pm there was a sizeable queue of eager diners both inside and outside the door waiting for a table.

View of half of the restaurant from our table by the entrance:

"A Lorcha" refers to a type of sailboat and the decor seemed to carry a nautical theme with whitewashed walls, wooden roof beams and yellow archways. We were attended by an affable fellow who was happy to give us a couple of suggestions and also helpfully let us know when we'd ordered enough dishes. There was a wide selection of dishes in the menu, and it really was a shame there was only 2.5 of us eating, because I'd love to try more dishes. Portion sizes are generous, meant for sharing, and quite reasonably priced.

Beautiful bread, crusty on the outside, fluffy soft on the inside:

A spicy clams dish with a tomatoey sauce that was great with the bread:

Arroz de marisco a Portuguesa (mixed seafood rice, Portuguese-style). The rice was rich in umami flavours from being cooked with the seafood, and we really enjoyed this:

I'm still dreaming about the delicious seafood rice which was packed with shrimps, mussels and crab:

Galinha de Caril - curried chicken. Mildly spiced predominantly with turmeric, this was delicious. I'd been meaning to try more of the Macanese-style chicken curry ever since we ate some at the Macau Ferry Terminal last year:

This was a lovely experience, and I recommend A Lorcha for those who want to try some Portuguese food in Macau. Just make sure to book a table in advance to avoid disappointment! I've decided from our two experiences with Portuguese food that I really like the cuisine!

A Lorcha
289 Rua do Almirante Sergio
Sao Lourenco, Macau
Tel: +853 2831 3193
Opening hours: Wed-Mon 12:30-3pm and 6:30-11pm

Portuguese @ Galo, Macau

I'm quite fortunate to have exposure to many cuisines and foods from different parts of the world, but I've never had the chance to try out Portuguese cuisine (and no, Nando's does not count because strictly speaking, it's not Portuguese, despite what the promoters would like to market it as). I was therefore quite eager to try out some Portugese/Macanese dishes when we recently went to Macau (which was previously a Portuguese colony). I took note that Rua do Cunha is the foodie street of Macau, known for the shops selling various goodies of Macanese, Chinese and Portuguese origins, and the area also has a number of Portuguese restaurants. We headed into Taipa Village after watching Zaia, and unfortunately our first choice of Portuguese restaurant was full, and we weren't that eager to hang around for another hour to have dinner (it was past 7:30pm by the time we arrived in the area, and the boy was understandably tired and hungry already). So we walked the short length down Rua do Cunha, which was crowded and bustling with tourist shoppers buying food souvenirs, and found Galo at the end of the street. This restaurant was also full, which we took as a good sign, but there was only a 20 minute wait for a table, which was better than 1 hour.

Entering Rua do Cunha:

Galo is a no-frills eatery with simple and somewhat aged interior. Service is also rather frank with no frills, but at least the waitresses can speak English. There is a fairly extensive menu at Galo, offering a wide variety of simple and home-style Portuguese and Macanese dishes. We asked for suggestions, and ordered three dishes which turned out to be good choices.

Amêijoas à Bulhão Pato (Portuguese clams, Bulhão Pato-style) - a simple dish of clams cooked with garlic, olive oil and coriander. This dish is named after a 19th-century Portuguese poet who is more famous for his clams recipe than his poetry:

Franguinho no Churrasco (barbecued chicken) - we loved the charcoal flavour imbued in the chicken flesh.:

Bacalhau à Brás (salted codfish with onions, potatoes and egg) - similar to scrambled eggs with ingredients. This is one of the most popular bacalhau dishes in Portugal:

Overall the meal was a good way to experience Portuguese and Macanese food. I was grateful that Galo turned out to be a fairly good choice after our first option fell through. Reservations highly recommended, especially on a weekend.

Galo
45 Rua dos Clérigos
Taipa Village
Taipa Island, Macau
Tel. +853 2882 7423

Macau's Portuguese Egg Tarts - Lord Stow's vs Margaret's

Anyone who has either been to Macau, lives there, or have heard about this ex-Portuguese colony would know that Portuguese egg tarts are Macau's most famous and popular snack. It is said that the Hong Kong-style egg tart (aka dan tat) - our favourite sweet dim sum - evolved from the Portuguese egg tarts, brought to HK from Macau. The egg tarts in Macau are quite different from the ones in HK (and apparently, even in Portugal itself), but we found it difficult not to draw comparisons with the egg tarts familiar to us. Egg tarts are quite easily available from bakeries and restaurants across Macau, but the two most well-known ones are from Lord Stow's Bakery and Margaret's Café e Nata. Lord Stow's is the most famous of the two by far, claiming fame in international waters in Japan, Korea and the Philippines. There are a number of Lord Stow's franchises around Macau, including at The Venetian where we watched a Cirque du Soleil performance, so it was relatively easy access to their egg tarts. There is only one Margaret's Café e Nata, and I read somewhere that the owner, Margaret, is the ex-wife of the creator of Lord Stow's. Both bakeries have their own following and fans, and one of our objectives during our weekend in Macau was to find out which egg tart we liked better.

Lord Stow's signage:

Lord Stow's Bakery franchise at The Venetian - small but comfortable setting:

Since we were at The Venetian for a show on our arrival day, we took the opportunity after the show to grab a couple of hot egg tarts at Lord Stow's. Each tart cost around MOP$8, which is pricier than the egg tarts we can get at bakeries in HK. I guess they are milking all they can from their name. The egg tarts were delicious with smooth custard filling and flaky pastry. The custard was a bit sweeter than the HK versions, and I could tell from the pastry texture that lard was an ingredient (not necessarily a bad thing if not consumed in excess).

Hot egg tart:

The boy approved of the taste:

The next morning after we checked out, we made our way into Macau's centre and dropped by Margaret's Café prior to doing some sight-seeing. It's a small, no-frills coffee shop (of more questionable hygiene standard than at Lord Stow's) located in a back alley just a little away from a major street. It didn't take us long to locate it, and the tables were already full at 10am in the morning (and I heard it gets much more crowded in the afternoon). Margaret doesn't just sell egg tarts - there are also sandwiches, pies and other baked goods for a substantial snack or meal. Don't expect to be treated cordially here, and I reckon if this was any other coffee shop, the surly service would surely be enough to turn customers away. The egg tart was served piping hot with pastry that flaked even more than the ones at Lord Stow's. The custard filling was not too different from Lord Stow's, however the pastry was very greasy and too buttery even for hubby (and this man loves his butter!).

Margaret's Café e Nata:

Peeking into the doorway from where we sat. The egg tarts are in those trays in the centre of the shot, but you must first order and pay at the counter just behind the glass door on the left. There are no clear signs to indicate this, but the serving lady by the egg tart trays will act like it's the most obvious thing and treat you accordingly:

Good enough custard filling, but this egg tart lost a couple of points for the too-greasy pastry:

I think it's quite obvious that Lord Stow's egg tarts win over Margaret's. If we had to choose between these Portuguese-style egg tarts and the Hong Kong egg tarts, we still do prefer HK egg tarts. Both lard and butter are not very healthy, so it's not advisable to eat egg tarts in excess!

Venetian's Lord Stow's Bakery & Café
Shop 2119a, Level 3
The Grand Canal Shoppes
The Venetian Macau Resort Hotel
Estrada da Baía de N. Senhora da Esperança, s/n
Taipa, Macau
Tel. +853 2886 6889
Open everyday

Margaret's Café e Nata
Edifício Kam Loi (Gum Loi Building)
Rua Almirante Costa Cabral
Nam Van, Macau
Tel: +853 2871 0032
Closed on Wednesday