Macau Food and Travel Guide

Macau serves up a one-of-a-kind cuisine born from four centuries of Portuguese and Cantonese exchange. Macanese food blends African spice, Indian curry, Portuguese technique and Chinese ingredients into dishes you cannot find anywhere else in the world.

What to Eat

Pace yourself, because half the joy of Macau is snacking your way down a single street.

• Pork chop bun — a crisp, bone-in fried pork chop tucked into a soft buttery roll, simple and addictive.
• Portuguese egg tart — a flaky pastry shell filled with creamy custard and a caramelized, slightly burnt top.
• Minchi — Macau's comforting national dish of minced beef or pork with potatoes, soy and a fried egg over rice.
• Almond cookies — crumbly, fragrant biscuits sold warm from the bakeries along the old streets.
• Serradura — a "sawdust" pudding of layered cream and crushed biscuit, light and sweet.

Where to Go

Senado Square, with its wave-patterned cobblestones and pastel colonial buildings, is the historic center and a good place to begin. Fan out into the surrounding lanes for bakeries handing out free cookie samples and shops selling sheets of dried pork jerky.

Cross to Taipa Village for the densest cluster of Macanese restaurants and snack stalls, especially along the food street of Rua do Cunha, where you can sample egg tarts, pork chop buns and almond cookies within a few steps.

A practical tip: take the free cookie and jerky samples seriously, since they let you compare bakeries before committing to a box. Menus mix Chinese and Portuguese, and smaller spots may post only one or the other, so photographing the menu to translate it helps you order true Macanese dishes like minchi or African chicken instead of sticking to the obvious tourist picks.