Journey to Hong Kong - FEASTING IN MACAU: OLD TAIPA

SAN HOU LEI CAFÉ (新好利咖啡饼店)

I made an observation about the milk tea (奶茶) in Hong Kong and Macau. It has a different flavor from tea (teh) found in Singapore. I believe the difference came from the tealeaves, which has a different flavour from what we have in Singapore. Different from the Lipton tea that I drink at home. Now that I think about it, I should have bought a box of Lipton tea in Hong Kong to test its flavour. Even the colour of their milk tea is different. When you order teh in Singapore, you get a milky brown brew, made paler by the spoonful of condensed milk. In Hong Kong and Macau, you get a very murky dark brown cup of tea. Muddy, I would say, but not in a disgusting manner. However, I am not used to the flavour. It has a very strong flavour, of… I am not sure what. I do not enjoy it very much, but it sure wakes me up.

Milk Tea.

The tiny shop space.

San Hou Lei Café is an old style cha chaan teng (茶餐庁) with two rooms filled with rectangular white tables and plastic chairs. Sharing of tables is necessary, as the small place has limited seating. We ordered a bowl of pork chop noodle in soup, a plate of stir-fried beef noodle (hor fun) and a plate of curry beef rice. We also ordered the quintessential Portuguese egg tart, the bird’s nest tart and a milk custard tart. When the food came, it looks very appetizing (as you will see in the pictures). The beef hor fun especially, with its shiny thick rice noodles cooked with tender slices of beef, garnished with beansprouts and spring onions, in silky black sauce. It looks good, but really, the taste could not be more disappointing. It is as if the chef has forgotten to add salt! There is no taste from the black sauce and no taste from the beef. The beef by itself is tender and juicy, but again, we found the taste wanting.              

Stir-fried Beef Hor Fun.

The plate of curry beef rice is delicious and absolutely satisfying. The amount of curry is just right, and does not overwhelm the dish. It is not spicy and the slices of beef are once again, tender and juicy. The accompanying chunks of potato in the dish were too large for my liking, but makes for a complementary dish to the beef. Besides, the pairing of potato and curry is never wrong. What I do like, besides the tender beef, is the large slices of white onion. It adds an extra crunch to the dish. The bowl of soup noodles with pork chop is nothing to shout about. The slim yellow noodles are well cooked, springy not soggy. The slab of pork chop is flavourful, as is the soup. The disappointing factor about this dish is that these are all there is to it! There is no egg (wallet egg preferably), no vegetables, nothing! How sad is it to eat only pork, noodles, and soup as one dish. It is not satisfying (now I sound like a whiny kid) at all. I am sure we could request for an egg, we just have to pay for it, but do the soup noodles not come with its own ingredients? What if we did not want any add-ons, then it will literally just be a bowl of soup and noodles. I found that odd.

Curry Beef Rice.

Pork Chop Soup Noodles.

After our mains, we moved on to the tarts. The Portuguese egg tart was charred but delicious. The bird’s nest tart was another disappointment. Not that it was bad. It was just not spectacular. You get pale white custard that strangely resembles that of the milk tart. The only difference is that it has a few strips of bird’s nest inside. We all agreed that it tastes like the milk tart. The milk tart is quite good though, and the taste of milk is not too strong (which I like). If memory serves, I think there is a slight hint of coconut in the custard. However, if you cannot take the taste of milk at all, I suggest you skip it. Nevertheless, the crusts for the tarts are delightfully flakey and buttery. The texture of the custard, in general, is soft but not too soft that it drips after the first bite.

Bird's Nest Tart.

Milk Tart.

Portuguese Egg Tart.

Overall, it is a decent place to get your breakfast fix. There are other dishes that you can try, but I like the curry beef rice the best!

Read more about San Hou Lei and to get their address: Juliana Loh and Places and Foods.   

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SERRADURA DESSERT (AKA SAWDUST DESSERT)

Prior to the trip, I read up on what to eat in Macau and this Macanese ‘sawdust’ dessert kept popping up. I have never seen anything like it and there is nothing like that in Singapore, so I thought that it is a ‘must’ try. It was more than dissatisfying; it was nothing that you should waste your stomach space and money on.

We traipsed along Old Taipa looking for a suitable place that sells the Serradura Dessert. We finally picked one (I did not catch the name of the shop) and we went in. I am not sure what made us choose this shop, but the shop window displayed a few examples of the Serradura dessert flanked by boxes of Marie biscuits. Marie biscuits? You mean the sawdust is made from crushed Marie biscuits? I ate Marie biscuits when I was young, dipping them into cups of hot Milo. I hated them, because they are relatively tasteless. I only ate them because I was forced to and I have not touched them since I left kindergarten.

The shop was tiny with a second level for more seating. Even the second level was small and had not much seats. There were a few customers in the shop. That should have raised some sort of warning bell, but we obstinately made our way to the second level and seated ourselves. We were excited to try this hyped-about dessert. We ordered a Serradura cake, a Serradura pudding and a few drinks. I thought that maybe the dessert would be quite nice, despite knowing that Marie biscuit is the big ‘draw’ of the dessert. I mean, blogs were praising them and there were even recipes online teaching you how to make your own crushed Marie biscuit dessert! Therefore, I waited in anticipation to see how it would turn out.

Serradura 'sawdust' Cake.

Serradura 'sawdust' Pudding.

When the desserts were served, they do look appetising. The Serradura cake is a misnomer. There is no cake, just a wedge of cream with thin layers of sawdust in between. I LOVE (<3 <3 <3) cream, so it really looks like my kind of dessert. The pudding looks like, pudding, with a mound of sawdust plopped on top of it. We dug in, and were not impressed. The cake/cream was tasteless and the thin layers of crushed Marie biscuit (tasteless as well) do nothing to improve the blandness. There was nothing extraordinary and the cream was hugely disappointing. It was not even sweet. Same goes for the pudding, which does not have the familiar gelatinous texture of a normal pudding, but one that is like cream. The SAME bland cream used to make the ‘cake’. Did they really just use the same ingredients (bland cream and tasteless Marie biscuits) and made it into two different desserts? We felt so cheated. The desserts were not expensive per se, but for all its hype, we felt scammed of our money, time and stomach space.

To be fair, we did not try other the Serradura desserts from other shops. Maybe we were unlucky to visit that particular shop. Maybe our expectations were too high. Maybe we are just not suited to its subtle bland taste. Maybe I am just prejudiced against Marie biscuits (whole and crushed). Maybe that is not how Serradura desserts taste like! I read on some reviews that the cream is supposed to be sweet. Maybe this shop serves the ‘healthier version’. Whatever it was, it definitely put us off Serradura desserts.

I would recommend that you try the dessert for the sake of trying it and you could return to your home country to tell everybody about it. Who knows? You might find something you like about it. After all, there must be a reason for its popularity.

Recipes for Serradura 'sawdust' Dessert: Recipe 1 & Recipe 2, Recipe 3. 

Note: You can tell that I am no fan of bland tasteless food.