The Taipa restaurant trade is usually considered confined to the stretch of a dozen excellent little tavernas two blocks from the village centre. Now a new restaurant has opened, but on the road between the Hyatt hotel and the turnoff to the airport. Yet such is the reputation of Sol Nascente that a few gourmets even in Hong Kong are beginning to praise its food. Sol Nascente's owner has described the menu as 'nouvelle Macanese'. Corny as the description may be, I can think of nothing better. For the food is decidedly more Macanese than Portuguese - but each of the dishes has a finesse, a delicacy and an elegance which can't be found in the more down-and-dirty Macanese restaurants springing up around the territory. Even before the menu arrives, though, you know Sol Nascente is first-class. The room has the illusion of a Portuguese patio, with a wooden ceiling, balustrades and columns. The view is hardly entrancing (on one side is Macau's version of an Urban Council cement garden), but the large bar is bright and cheery. So is the guitar music, which - for once - fits the atmosphere. Nor have we ever had better service. Most of the waitresses are Filipinos. The manager, Veronica, is the wife of the owner. She couldn't have been more forthcoming or enthusiastic in her descriptions of the food. It was a joy dining in a restaurant with such nice people. The problem with the colourful menu is that so many dishes are intriguing - for example, what went into stuffed mussel, kidney in the basket, crab with tapenade sauce, chef-style baked fish or Mozambique chicken? The spring lamb in Guinness was self-explanatory, although the flavour seemed questionable. These dishes were merely the introduction. There was also duck stew cooked in its own blood, a traditional Portuguese dish; and roast duck with saffron sauce, which sounded vaguely Goanese. But where did they find the recipe for crab sauteed with onions, garlic, paprika, papaya leaves and salted egg sauce? Friends raved about the boneless chicken wing stuffed with mushrooms and crabmeat with a cream sauce. Obviously we couldn't try everything. But with Veronica's help, we chose a modified banquet. First, the starters. Oyster-sized mussels were stuffed with fresh bread crumbs, bits of green shallot and garlic, then baked golden brown. Three of them (for $22) were eagerly downed. Next came the codfish cakes, always a good test in Macau. They were very delicate with perhaps a mite too much potato, but augmented by sprigs of piquant coriander. The kidney in the basket was a real surprise. The 'basket' is a misnomer, for this is a pie crust filled with chicken kidneys, onions, clams and bits of garlic. A fourth starter (we hadn't ordered it, but the kitchen decided their mistake was to be our asset) was the clams in coriander sauce, actually coriander leaves with lemon juice, like Thai clams with lemon grass. Abstaining from the salad (yet yearning for a salad of grilled pimentos), we had a rich, almost minestrone-like vegetable soup of the day, and a light caldo verde filled with sausages. Now came the house speciality: three giant prawns, split open, stuffed with garlic and spring onions, again with fresh coriander. So fresh and light, barely poached. Told that Mozambique chicken was 'not spicy', I asked for something hotter to be added. That was my mistake. The boneless chicken came in a tomato-onion sauce, and the addition of hot peppers masked the flavours. My fault. And the cost? With a bottle of Quinta Douro white wine, coffee, egg custard and chocolate mousse, the whole meal came to $508. In other words, Macau still provides value - in originality, taste and, almost incidentally, in price. SOL NASCENTE RESTAURANT, Chun Leong Garden, Avenida Dr Sun Yat Sen, Taipa Island, Macau. Open: Noon-3pm, 6pm-11pm
