I Went To Macau

Was with a friend at Bugis Junction last night and was told of a new Crystal Jade Macau Cafe Restaurant at the basement level. My eyes brightened up immediately when I hear that!

This restaurant serves Macau cuisine food. I was thrilled as I had been to Macau 6 years ago. I was there for 4 weeks (longest time out of home thus far) for a missions exposure trip. From what I recall of food in Macau, the food that I had most of the time were takeaways from cafes and homecooked food. Homecooked food was pretty much simple but were very tasty. My favourite was soy sauce chicken wings. Apparently it is very easy to cook and the taste is superb! Takeaways from cafes were common in Macau. A culture shock we had was seeing the layer of oil left behind in the styrofoam boxes after we finish our meal!! Apparently this was how they cook. One of our favourites was pork chop rice. It seems like pork is in the main diet of the Macanese, many of their famous dishes has got to do with pork and luncheon meat!

(I didn't bring my camera... so had to use my mobile to snap a few shots below)

Left clockwise: cuttlefish with salt & pepper, pumpkin soup with seafood,
red bean dessert drink, grape dessert drink and ham & egg sandwich

Pork chop bun (ju yuk bao in cantonese)

Macaroni (tong xing fan in Cantonese) with egg and luncheon meat

Having tong xing fan really brings back much memories... One of the signature dishes in this restaurant was the ju yuk bao. The pork patty was tasty and chewy. The bun was toasted to make the crispy texture. The egg and ham sandwich was simple but it was how the Macanese ate. I'm not sure if the dessert drinks were Macanese but they were very refreshing.

It was interesting to know how the Macanese sees Singapore. I remembered seeing roadhside stall selling watermelons from Singapore. I never knew that Singapore produces watermelons?!? Those watermelons fetched a higher price than others. I suspect they were imported from Malaysia (not Singapore). The other interesting thing was to know what does their xin zhou mai fen (or chow fan) xin zhou - Singapore island, mai fen - bee hoon, chow fan - fried rice. Any food named xin zhou, you will see it being cooked with curry powder! The xin zhou mai fen you see in Singapore itself is far from that. So seems like any food associated with Singapore means spicy or curry.

Overall, the food at Crystal Jade Macau in itself was good. I will go back to try their pork knuckles (yes, its pork again) and other dishes. It was good to know that there were less oil than those I had in Macau. However the real food in Macau is surely better. Maybe the oil made the difference?? My church pastors and some elders just came back yesterday from week's conference in Macau. I wonder how they like the food there?