Macau Portuguese Food

Update: Jan 2016 - Location has been closed 

(They were an older couple who ran the Food Court Stall and I think they retired from owning their own restaurant - they work at different places now.  I'm super sad about the fact that I won't get to eat their amazing Portuguese Chicken and Baked Chicken Spaghetti anymore since they have seriously raised the bar for Macanese cuisine for me).

November 28, 2015

I actually regularly come here for their Baked Chicken Spaghetti and Portuguese Chicken (if I were to blog every time I went - my blog would just be overwhelmed by the same pictures all the time). 

Stir Fry Noodles and Baked Chicken Spaghetti in Tomato (Ketchup) sauce

Delicious and so tasty...every time I come here, I think about whether I should ask for their secret recipe for their ketchup sauce and Portuguese sauce (which is usually curry powder and coconut milk) because they make the best sauces of both that I've ever had. 

January 8, 2012

The Menu

 

Macau Portuguese Food is located inside the mall in the Food Court area (meaning super fast service and really cheap prices!). I have no idea how they prepare so much food in such little time, but you could order - do a quick lap around the mall to check out the latest cruise deals, vacation deals, buy egg tarts at the popular bakery or just pick up groceries for your next meal - and voilà when you get back - they're waiting with your take-out order!

Portuguese Chicken in Macau Style

A little background is in order since you definitely can't find something like this in Portugal: Macau was a Portuguese trader settlement in China until they returned the city back over to China in 1999. So even though Macau is part of China, over the years, they've incorporated a lot of Portuguese influence in their culture and cuisine (called Macanese). 

Portuguese Chicken (Called Po Kok Gai in Cantonese) is a mild curry with cream sauce and Portuguese ingredients. In this case, there's chorizo sausage, olives, onions, hardboiled eggs and green & red peppers.

This was AMAZING! This take-out place is really well-known for their Portuguese chicken and it's no wonder when you actually try it! The sauce is creamy but not too heavy and in combination with the rice, it really builds up an appetite - it's like once you start eating, you can't stop! My favourite parts are the boneless chicken pieces, small-cut potatoes (wow do the potatoes ever soak up the flavour of the sauce) and the red & green peppers and onions which add a sweetness to the whole curry. 

It's fantastic together and such a good deal for only $5.25 (excl. Tax)

Tofu in African Sauce

A perfect example of fusion: Tofu + African sauce. I wasn't sure what African sauce since I've never heard of it, but I decided to start out small and try it on Tofu. (It also helps that Tofu with African Sauce was $1 compared to African Chicken Steak which was like an entire meal with rice for $5.30). 

The sauce was interesting and quite good! It had peanut oil, chilli peppers (but it wasn't spicy), garlic and a lot of spices (that I couldn't identify). 

Baked Chicken Spaghetti

For the people who know my food habits well, I LOVE Chinese "Ketchup" Spaghetti! And this place does the BEST Baked Chicken Spaghetti I've ever had and it's such a good deal for $5.99! It's my favourite place to have this meal because the chicken is ABMT: abundant, boneless, moist and tender. The ketchup spaghetti is fantastic - the sauce isn't too sweet (meaning that they never over-do the ketchup) and it's still savoury like tomato sauce. There's also enough sauce in the dish to cover each part of each strand of spaghetti (a must in my book). Absolutely delicious (even if it doesn't look the most appealing)!

One of my favourite good food and cheap eats! 

Sprucewood Handmade Cookie Co. - Warkworth, ON

I felt like I discovered Sprucewood Handmade Cookie Co. last year when I went to the Season's Christmas Show.  And I was a little disappointed when I went to the Christmas show this year and didn't see them exhibiting.  So on my next trip to Kingston, we detoured to Warkworth to see if we could grab some cookies!

They have the cutest storefront and inside they had a ton of samples for us to try out all the flavours and figure out which ones to buy. 

They had the same deal as the shows: $20 for 4 boxes of cookies (here are some of the flavours we got - we actually bought 8 boxes)

Raspberry, Ginger, Chocolate Chip, Lemon Zest and Classic

First of all: their shortbread cookies are the best I've ever had! I like a nice firm and not too crumbly cookie packed with flavour and boy, do they ever deliver!  Personally, I prefer the sweet cookies over the savoury cookies like cheddar or rosemary and I'm a huge fan of the seasonal cookies like raspberry and apricot. They have this great way of combining the flavours with their delicious bite sized cookies without compromising their cookie texture (which is that perfect firmness, but crumbly when you bite into it). 

My favourites are the chocolate chip and classic, however, I wanted to mix up my cookie boxes with some other flavours.  Based on my taste test, I decided to grab the lemon zest which had a nice sweet lemon profile and ginger because it's interesting and unique. 

Overall: I would highly recommend a detour here for their delicious shortbread cookies in Warkworth, or you can catch them at a Trade Show. 

Website: http://www.sprucewoodcookies.com/

Yummy Bar-B-Q

I came here with a co-worker for lunch and I was feeling a little sick, so I decided to get the Pork Bone Soup rather than one of the specials. 

Pork bone soup

The only thing spicy about it was the fact that they added chili flakes to the soup, because other than that, it was barely spicy at all and it wasn't particularly flavourful either.  There was a lot of pork bone and a lot of soup, but I've had better in other Korean places (or even Galleria Supermarket). 

It was kind of cool that they gave us tofu as a side dish. 

Kathmandu Restaurant

My friend and I bought the $20 Groupon for the lunch buffet for two people at Kathmandu Restaurant.  It was a pretty reasonable deal for lunch and it would be our first experience with Nepalese food.

The restaurant was located in Yorkville and the buffet section was tucked inside the restaurant:

Clockwise from top left: Tandoori Chicken, saag paneer, butter chicken, goat curry, rice, vegetable curry
The butter chicken was awesome, but there wasn't as much Nepalese food offered at the buffet.

Naan

My round two with a lot more butter chicken and goat curry and also some eggplant dish
The food was good, but rather heavy.


Desserts
We were so stuffed from the curries that we could barely eat dessert. Also, Indian desserts are known to be really sweet - so we only took a bit of each.  They were interesting and not as sweet as we thought, but probably not something I would eat frequently.

Overall: Even though we didn't get as much Nepalese food as we wanted, I thought they had decent Indian food. 

Milestones @ Yorkdale Shopping Mall

I think the Yorkdale Mall Milestones is probably the best Milestones I've tried. The food is always consistently good and the service is really quick.  Also the ambiance inside is really nice. 

Burger

I'm not really sure why the centre of the bun was burnt....but the burger was juicy and it was good. 

Seafood Linguine

It was pretty good, but the dish felt a little heavy (maybe msg in the dish?).  The garlic bread was a little strange looking, but tasted okay.

Website: http://www.milestonesrestaurants.com/

Don Mills VIP theatre

I heard so many good reviews about The Martian that I really wanted to see it in the theatres.  So I convinced my friends to see the Martian at the Don Mills VIP theatre because I also wanted to try the whole experience. 

Chipotle Chicken Club Wrap with chicken, greens, bacon and cheese with fries on the side. 

The food was kinda mediocre, but I guess it's more about the experience here? It was nice that they delivered the food to our seats before the movie started - but it took me like 15 minutes before someone actually paid attention to me to take my order. 

Tandoori flatbread with chicken, goat cheese, pepers and drizzled with honey

This dish sounded cooler than it actually was. It tasted okay and at least it wasn't like microwaved or anything, but it was rather pricey for a small theatre food portion.