MELTING POT

Chinese and Portuguese flavours blend marvellously in Macanese cuisine

THERE IS A difference between Portuguese and Macanese cuisines. Authentic Portuguese cuisine is direct, mostly seasoned with sea salt and with liberal use of tomato and olive oil. Although spices have been used in Portugual since seafarers such as Vasco da Gama brought them home centuries ago, they are used sparingly.

Macanese food, a blend of Portuguese and Chinese cuisines, is noticeably spicy. It features flavours from the former Portuguese colonies of Brazil, Mozambique, Goa and Malacca.

The Macanese cook with common Portuguese ingredients like olive oil and tomato and popular Chinese ingredients such a black beans and cumin.

About 30 years ago there were probably no more than five Portuguese restaurants in Macau. Most people would eat at home and restaurants were for tourists. Hong Kong tourists mostly went there for shark?s fin soup, because it was cheaper, or bought dumplings, crabs, meat jerky, confectionery and salted fish.

In the 1980s Solmar was the king of Portuguese/Macanese food. A rival later opened in the form of Pinocchio?s, but there was plenty of business to go around and the two restaurants comfortably reigned together.

But competition became fierce as more Portuguese and Macanese, many retired government officials, opened restaurants in the 1990s to offer the real thing. O Manel is a good example of Portuguese cuisine while Litoral is bona fide Macanese.