Macau (Days 4 and 5)

Went to Macau on the weekend for some go-karting, colonial architecture, and food.

The first order of (eating) business was to find a pork sandwich ("oh mun ju pah bao"). We found this in the touristy area at a place called E.S.Kimo for $8 per (about a buck and a quarter). Unfortunately I didn't get a great shot of the meat in this picture, but it's basically a grilled boneless pork chop seasoned up with some spices (tasted a hint of curry) inside a toasted Portugese bun. Simple, but really delicious. The seasoned pork chop and crunchy on the outside/soft on the inside bun make a perfect match. I ended up eating 2 for a snack.

We then went to a Chinese restaurant for some dinner. Started off with some deep fried fish balls - the sauce is a salty oyster-ish dip:
Also had some wonton noodles:
But the star attraction was the crab congee:
This was a small, thin-shelled (but still hard shell) crab boiled in the congee. Each bowl of congee had an entire crab. The taste was really nice, with the "fresh" crab taste permeating the congee. However, the crab itself was pretty hard to eat because of the small size. Still, the meat was sweet and tasty.

The next day, we went for some more sightseeing on the Macau peninsula after a so-so (but free) buffet breakfast at the hotel. Morning snack was a Portugese egg tart (like a Chinese egg tart but the pastry is extra flakey and the eggier custard is caramelized). I also had another pork chop bun.

On our walk down the Macau peninsula, we saw some interesting food stalls. In this egg stall, they sell normal chicken eggs on the left as well as some more interesting eggs on the right. I think we concluded that those black ones were salted duck eggs and the ones directly behind those were preserved duck eggs (thousand-year eggs) but I might have that backwards now.
This stall sold some dried goods. The black stuff is a vegetable called "fat choy" which is a close homonym to the last two words in "gung hei fat choy" - hence it is eaten during New Years. Most Chinese kids also call it "tou fat," meaning hair, because that's pretty much what it looks like (tastes better though).

Much more dried stuff here. See the dried starfish hanging on the right? Those preserved sausages on the left look tasty.
Anyway, dinner was at a Portugese restaurant called Pinocchio on Taipa island, the closer of the two main islands that make up Macau along with the peninsula. This picture shows (clockwise from front): grilled sardines, gai lan (chinese broccoli), grilled steak and caldo verde (green soup made from collards and potato). You can also see my friend eating a borscht-type soup in the upper right.
Can't have Portugese food without salted codfish (in this case, codfish cakes):
Finally, Portugese-style baked chicken (po kwok gai), basically chicken baked in a creamy coconut-curry gravy. I suspect this is the least "Portugese" of any of these dishes save for the gai lan, but it's the one that Hong Kong people always eat. At least this one had olives.
All in all, the food at Pinocchio was good but not great. The beef steak was really tasty and tender, and I was rather addicted to the codfish cakes.

Anyway, after dinner I had one more pork chop bun at another E.S.Kimo outlet, plus a Hong Kong style French toast (meaning that there's some filling, peanut butter in this case, in the French toast). There's always room for a pork chop bun and deep fried bread.