Memories of Macau

The most memorable food experience I had in Macau was having the good fortune of tasting the best Portuguese tart ever.  We were doing our own walking tour of Macau and basically followed our noses to this bakery.  It was not in a touristy area, just on a side street we happened to be walking along but I smelled it a block away.  And when I paid for just one to try, it turned out to be the best I'd ever tasted.  Could be it's hot and just out of the oven, could be that I was hungry, but I've never had such flaky pastry and the custard centre with exactly the right consistency.  I gobbled that one up on the street and bought another one to take with me to wherever we were going to eat lunch.  Then on the return trip on the way to dinner, I bought another one.  I was surprised that I didn't get indigestion from all this indulgence!  The store called itself a "bread specialty" store, an unusual name for a bakery in this part of the world and the closest thing I could think of was "artisanal" - which indeed it was.  By the time we got to Senado Square where there were lots of Portuguese tarts but no enticing aroma, I knew I didn't need to try them - they just didn't look as good as this one.

The store was on Rua do Padre Antonio, for anyone who would like to find it

Much of this trip was for us nostalgic and the almond cookies from Macau were fond childhood memories.  The local bakeries had taken advantage of this general nostalgia and created a store with a history display of the evolution of the cookie.  Lots of food sampling - in fact, we tried so many we didn't have to buy any!  The  best was still the almond cookie with almond chunks in them.

Beef and pork jerky galore

We walked off most of the calories from all these samplings so there was still room for dinner.  This was at a small cozy, purportedly authentic Portuguese restaurant A Lorcha - fish cakes were good but the best was the grilled sardines. The "Portuguese" chicken was okay.  It was a fine end to a long day.  See Travelswithrarecat for the rest of our day.

Fish cakes

Grilled sardines

"Portuguese" chicken