Food in Macau

Usually food doesn't warrant its own blog post, but a day in Macau meant highlighting its food.
I have also noticed, that if I travel alone, I end up eating more maybe because
 a) There is no one to judge me
 b) No one to discuss with on what to buy/when to eat
 c) I can eat when I am not hungry just because something looks good

So it may be biased that Macau gets a whole food blog post, but whatevs, the food was delish.

Since I knew I had to take a ferry, I decided to not eat breakfast. Things churning around in tummy is no good while on sea. But I did buy some fresh mango juice for the 30 minute walk to the ferry. After enjoying the mango goodness, I refrained from eating till I safely arrived in Macau and the ground was steady. Soon after reaching Macau, my first treat for myself was an egg tart ! Brought by the Portugese to Macau, the Macanese version is a slight deviation from the traditional pastel de nata but at 3HKD a piece it was a treat. Wiki'ing it later, I found out that it is ranked #16 on CNN go's most delicious foods !



For lunch, I decided that the place with the longest line has to serve the most delicious food. I ended up with a porkchop burger and milk tea. The milk tea was great with the dry burger though the burger itself wasn't too bad. My hands were too greasy to take a picture, so here is one shamelessly stolen from google.



I continued my walking tour with nai cha  in hand. After exploring more of the city, I was ready for some snacking. To my surprise, there were vendors offering free samples of different kinds of meat jerky and cookies. And there were rows of shops doing the same thing. Also, people were especially nice about offering samples to me compared to the mainland Chinese people. I guess it was the brown skin combined with the skinny girl look. I don't know if I had worn my panda hat,would I have gotten more cookies.

The famous Macau almond cookies were buttery, crunchy deliciousness. I do prefer the American style chewy cookies, but the almond cookies being crunchy and hard reminded me more of my ever favorite Danish butter cookies (speaking of which I hope Costco has available the big box for sale when I go back!). After my free snack time, I started to head back towards the city. I was heading back to the city center where I saw this food cart hot pot esque place.

From what I learned, observing from my strategic "next to the cart but not a customer" location was that you pick out what you want and place it in a plate. Then the lady cooks it in a boiling soup. But she has a different soup for seafood and a different one for meat. She uses only a pair of tongs (+hands) for cooking and then serves it steaming hot. She also believes that hairnets and gloves are over-rated when everything is going to be boiled at the end. The portions were huge and I believe it was only 15 HKD.

Instead of a giant hot pot thing, which would require mad skills to consume with chopsticks, while standing and people jostling you, I went ahead with another bun variety because all that observation made me hungry. However, this one was better than bun #1 and was actually a pan fried stuffed buttery bun filled with chopped pork, scallions/cilantro and something else which I couldn't figure out. Again, greasy hands = stealing picture from google. Washing that down with another milk tea, I headed to the casinos.

After a couple of hours at the casinos, I finally was at a huge food court, under the fake blue sky at The Venetian. Keeping in mind to have time to digest the food before ferrying it back, I decided to eat at the food court rather than near the ferry terminal.

After walking around, I saw a sign for original Macanese cuisine. I ordered the baked seafood curry rice and was delighted to see some cheese in it. It was very similar to Goan food, which was not a suprise considering the Portugese influence. However, they did not have any milk tea to offer and I had to go settle for water, though to their credit it was cold water (which is a rarity in China).  I am glad I ate my fill because with the queue, it took me another 2 hours before boarding the ferry. 

  

It was a fun filled delicious day. I think I succeeded in eating most of the things Macau is famous for :D
Though I will miss quite a bit of the Eastern food, I can't wait to gorge on cheese and chocolates when I get back !