A taste of Macau
Macanese cuisine is hard to classify, but chefs are finding creative ways to preserve it and the dishes are winning new fans.
When Danilo Tadeu Madeira began taking orders on his Facebook page for his home catering business, the 20-something office worker was not just trying to earn a bit of pocket money. He was trying to assert the identity of his own ethnicity.
“We used to have pride, to know who we were when we told people that we were Macanese,” Madeira said, referring mainly to the mixed-race descendants of Macau’s former Portuguese rulers and the majority Chinese population. “But now the ones who could cook our food well are getting old, so I wanted to introduce this taste again to younger people.”
In November, the Macau Special Administrative Region became only the third city within China to be named a Unesco Creative City of Gastronomy. Tourism officials see this as a marketing jackpot that can help diversify the appeal of the territory beyond casinos. But the main reason for the new distinction, the unique Macanese tradition, may be the hardest to taste.
“We are a breed on the verge of extinction,” said Miguel de Senna Fernandes, a lawyer, playwright and community leader. “But I’d rather not face that fact and believe that we’ll reinvent ourselves as we always have.”
But reinvention may not be easy when it comes to a highly traditional blend of dishes that are not only difficult to codify — with recipes passed down informally through home chefs — but also difficult to “prettify” in a restaurant setting.
“Ours is food that doesn’t look great on the plate — brown food,” said Sonia Palmer, the longtime proprietor of Riquexo, a simple cafeteria that is one of the few remaining Macanese outlets.
Beyond that, there simply may not be enough Macanese grannies or aunties who have stuck around. Since Macau’s handover to China, a large number have moved away. Today, the pro-preservation Confraria da Gastronomia Macaense (Macanese Gastronomic Association) can only list three hole-in-the-wall eateries that are wholly devoted to the cuisine.
“There’s no accurate way to count how many of us are still living here because it’s not easy to even say what’s a Macanese — it’s more of a feeling, something we recognise among ourselves,” Senna Fernandes said.
The 2018 estimated census shows that of Macau’s population of just over 600,000, Macanese are included among the 9.2% listed as “other” — with Chinese making up 88.7%.
“Few young people come back because of the lifestyle abroad,” Senna Fernandes said. “Which is why, one day soon, a Japanese inspector will be deciding for us the authenticity of a minchi.”
He is referring to a homey, soy-flavoured beef fry that is among a handful of recognisably Macanese signature specialties. These also include tacho, a miscellaneous stew; tamarind pork; a sweet parfait called serradura, or sawdust; and spicy renditions of African and Portuguese chicken unlike any found in either of those places.
At a traditional Macanese cha gordo or “fat tea” home feast, “you might see rabbit tapas, chili shrimps, pig ears, a kind of Macanese samosa”, said Raymond Vong, the manager of Henri’s Galley, a restaurant named for his Macanese father’s training as a chef on board ships. “Fermented shrimp paste and Chinese wine will be mixed with European bay leaves.”
The cuisine is said to have its origins with Portuguese wives trying to replicate familiar dishes with local Chinese ingredients. “We can see how they replaced kale with bok choy in a caldo verde [soup], or used Chinese sausage instead of chourico,”
said Marco Carvalho, a former editor of the Portuguese-language newspaper Ponto Final. “The big influence may have been the 17th-century fall of Malacca to the Dutch, bringing thousands of Malay-Portuguese and their spices to Macau.”
Coconut milk and turmeric, Indian curries from the colony of Goa, and piri-piri
chilies brought by troops rotating from Mozambique eventually arrived as well.
The trouble is identifying exactly what makes a cuisine Macanese. The majority of guides to Macau add to the confusion by regularly labelling foods that are simply “Made in Macau” as Macanese. This includes the egg tarts adapted from Portuguese pastries by Briton Andrew Stow, founder of Lord Stow’s Bakery, Chinese pork buns and the common croquettes made of bacalhau (salted codfish), an entirely Portuguese staple.
“There’s a lot of twisting of truth, a lot of stupidity out there. It’s like people saying pizza is Chinese,” said Senna Fernandes. “Besides, you are talking about 400 years, so it’s not as simple as A plus B.”
“Since Macau has been designated by Unesco, all efforts will take place for the next four years to promote and support the one and only Macanese gastronomy,” said Luis Machado, president of the Macanese Gastronomic Association. “It’s not a commercial cuisine anyway ... it’s a family one.”
While hotels have promoted the cuisine in the past, Machado says the impact has been small. He supports a government initiative to create a permanent archive of Macanese recipes through the Instituto de Formacao Turistica, Macau’s government training school for hospitality workers.
But Hans Rasmussen, the Ma cane se- Danish executive chef of the I FT educational restaurant, dislikes the cuisine’s word-ofmouth nature. “It’s going to die when they all want to keep the recipes secret,” he said.
Perhaps Macau’s casinos, with their US$34 billion in annual revenues, will pitch in — though out of the ultra-luxurious celebrity restaurants, mostly run by Peruvian, Argentine and Japanese chefs, 17 of which have Michelin stars, not a single one specialises in real Macanese food.
“But it’s not the IFT’s duty to save our cuisine,” says Vong of Henri’s Galley. “It’s our own people’s duty.”
The better-educated younger generations of Macanese are unlikely to gravitate to kitchen duties — with the exception of idealists like Madeira. He uses his cooking as a way to “share family stories” with his 65-year-old father, and has earned up to $12,000 so far through his Madeira Home Food delivery service.
“The way it’s going, I don’t know if we’ll have any Macanese restaurants in another 20 years,” Vong said.
However, he has hope for the durability of his cuisine. “Ours is a comfort food that always lasts. Even in France, most people go to bistros, not fine dining with Michelin stars,” Vong added.
“You can go to a Michelin-star place every night, but that only proves you are rich. It doesn’t prove you are living.”
““WWe used to have pride, to know who w we were when we told people that we were Macanese. But now the ones who could cook our food well are getting old, so I wanted to introduce this taste again to younger people” DANILO TADEU MADEIRA Caterer