Macanese cuisine is not something you’re likely to have had, unless you’ve been to Macau. It’s not even common in Lisbon, apparently, despite its status as a Portuguese fusion cuisine from a very long-standing colony. But Edinburgh is a city with a lot of interesting restaurants, and a ready audience for the nooks and crannies of global cuisine, so I guess it’s unsurprising to find it here. Spawn is pretty much a regular at Macau Kitchen, about a ten minute walk from her tenement; she was recognised on arrival and thanked enthusiastically for bringing her family.
The original intention at Macau Kitchen was to have no menu, and for the chef to follow his inspiration and available ingredients each night, but that turned out to be too scary for Edinburgh diners, who prefer the reassurance of a written menu. For a while they did a chef’s choice night on Sundays, which is what Spawn thought she’d booked us in for, but apparently even once a week was too often, so they settled on having an extensive specials board alongside the à la carte. I felt a bit sheepish about only ordering one special then, but the signature mains just sounded so good (and I avoid chicken unless it says it’s organic, for animal welfare reasons). Service is spectacularly friendly. The woman running front-of-house made us feel instantly welcome, and has an infectious enthusiasm for the food, announcing dishes like a boxing emcee as they arrive at each table. It’s a tiny place, so they could be forgiven for hurrying us through to keep up the number of covers, but that’s not the vibe here – this is food that takes as long as it takes, and the diner is given the time to notice what they’re eating. Our order did arrive extremely fast, however, which is all to the good. We shared three starters and two mains.
Bolinhos de bacalhau are a Portuguese style potato and salt-cod croquette, which felt the least Macanese of everything we had. I don’t know Portuguese cuisine, but this seemed pretty similar to things I’ve had in Spain: it was crispy, fluffy and fishy, just as you’d want. The duck spring roll with spicy mayo was meaty, and layered with flavour, with a perfectly brittle casing. The crispy salad was the star of the starters, shredded vegetables and pieces of ‘fried dough’, which seemed to be small triangles of flatbread, somehow staying crunchy in the sweet salad dressing right to the end of the meal. Minchi is Macau’s national dish (according to the interwebz), and is a very comforting combination of stir-fried beef mince and cubed vegetables, seasoned with delicious spicing (which resisted my palate’s attempt to analyse it), topped with a fried egg, and rich with layered umami. The coconut duck was probably the star of the show, a whole duck leg so tender that we were just given a spoon to serve it with, swimming in a rich spiced sauce.
The descriptions above may seem a little bit generic, and that’s because my knowledge isn’t up to the specifics. There were complex, aromatic seasonings right across the meal, subtleties perfectly matched to the brute force of the salt, sweet and umami, and my mouth knew it hadn’t had this cuisine before. It’s a very long-standing fusion, dating back to the seventeenth century, so it doesn’t feel remotely like a mixture of cultures – it’s its own thing, coherent, integrated and delicious. We finished with ‘golden citrus cake’ (tiny pieces of sponge topped with what were probably wafers of kumquat, drenched in syrup) and peanut mousse (a white, creamy mousse topped with crunchy charcoal peanut crumb), both very indulgent but not overwhelming in sweetness or quantity. The food at Macau Kitchen feels honest and authentic: it’s cooked to perfection and beautifully seasoned, but there’s nothing ‘fancy’ feeling about it – it’s a warm, comforting embrace for the mouth and stomach.
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