Macau
Dining And Drinking
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Macau is justly famous for excellent restaurants, unique cuisine and mellow bars. For sure, it is a premier dining and drinking destination in Asia. For five hundred years or so, Portuguese traders introduced the cuisine of their Brazilian and African colonies to Macau. As a result, the city now offers one of the world’s most intriguing gastronomic adventures.
A Macanese meal is essentially a Chinese interpretation of Portuguese cooking--it reflects the cultural and racial influences within the city. A glance at a typical Macanese menu reveals traditional Cantonese dishes, vibrant South American ingredients, wild African spices and rural Portuguese recipes. You may never find such a blend of global influences again.
Festivals are often great opportunities to savor traditional food styles. During the Chinese New Year and the Mid-Autumn Festival the Macanese dust off the ornate doilies and elaborately embroidered tablecloths and set the family table for armies of grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. Cha gorda (fat tea) is possibly the most Macanese meal of all, a veritable feast from heaven roast meats, soups, rice, potatoes, vegetables, cakes, egg tarts and tacho (a sausage and pig’s feet hotpot similar to the Portuguese cozido). Cha gorda is a family affair rather than a restaurant experience, but Macanese friends will gladly invite you to the family hearth.
Delicious Macanese food can be consumed at the Dom Galo Restaurant and Restaurant Platao, both located on the Macau Peninsula, as well as at Pinocchio’s on Taipa, and Balichao and Café Nga Tim on Coloane. Typical dishes include caldo verde soup, omelets, lots and lots of codfish, beef stews and freshly baked walnut breads. Macanese dishes are heavier than most Chinese dishes but the prices are cheap.
If you want to try Portuguese food, a number of restaurants preserve the taste of Portugal’s colonial heritage, its fishing villages and farms. The Clube Militar de Macau specializes in colonial-style feasts, while hugely popular institutions such as A Lorcha, Fernando’s, Cacarola Restaurant and Afonso III maintain authentic Portuguese menus. Some highlights include raw codfish salads, feijoada, Brazilian broad bean and pork stew, the marinated delights of African Chicken, and, though not for bunny-huggers, rabbit stew.
Although Macanese and Portuguese food give Macau that special identity unique in Asia, do not ignore the Cantonese and Chinese restaurants. For authentic food and atmosphere check out Long Kei for superior dim sum and noodle dishes. Baked earthworms at the
OK, that is enough about food. Let us get down to the nightlife, and surprisingly Macau has shed its image as a sleepy South China backwater. Many tourists and business people leave Macau thinking "great history, wonderful food, lovely people, but not much in the way of nightlife." They are wrong, very wrong.
The Avenida Marginal Baia Nova, known as “The Docks” to local expatriates, is fast becoming the top nightspot in Macau. It is a plethora of cool bars and relaxed restaurants lining a quiet boulevard beside the bay. Along the waterfront you will find the Oparium Café and the Rio Café bustling with young Chinese party-types, kids of expatriate parents, and even the parents. The Blue Bar is the minutest drinking den in town, and if you prefer a quieter and perhaps greener pint, the Irish Pub on Taipa supplies alcohol and a convivial atmosphere. Those seeking a more up-market venue could try The Embassy Bar in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, and jazz lovers should attend a smoky session at The Jazz Club.
Few places in Asia can match Macau’s mellow atmosphere a fascinating blend of European and Chinese dining and drinking cultures. Cocktails along a Coloane beach or a meal in a rustic Taipa restaurant followed by drinks along "The Docks" offer great evenings out and satisfying alternatives to losing all your money in the Lisboa Casino.
