Sitting next door to Restaurante Litoral, A Lorcha is a stones throw from the Maritime Museum with the name, A Lorcha, refering to a type of Portuguese boat, which is appropriate for a colony founded by seafaring explorers. The interior has white-washed walls with solid wooden beams and white and yellow arches. The green and white checked tablecloths with waiters running around in their penguin suits mark this spot as a family favorite of Portuguese cuisine.

Authentic dishes are on the menu. Some dishes ordered during our recent lunch visit were: Caldo verde, Portuguese kale soup with slivers of spicy chourico sausage. We also enjoyed Rissois de Camarao, which are crisp crescent-shaped parcels filled with shrimp in a creamy sauce – sinfully rich & absolutely delicious. Another favorite, the Pasteis de Bacalhau, dried, and later re-hydrated, cod fish than the Portuguese, or in this case, the Macanese codfish which makes for scrumptious crab cakes. Baked minced beef potato pie is also a great dish along with the char-grilled king prawns, clams prepared in garlic and olive oil, and grilled lamb chops. Feijoada is a distinctly Macanese-style pork knuckle, chourico, red beans & cabbage stew which is quite diffeent than the Brazilian feijoada, cooked with black beans & thickened with farofa (fried manioc flour). Popular in most Portuguese restaurants is Galinha a Africana, grilled “African” chicken, smothered with an intensely-flavoured, spicy gravy. There were only four of us in our party and this Portuguese feast certainly should have been enough for our lunch but put on the brakes because not-to-be-missed is A Lorcha’s dessert, Serradurra, a thick, ultra-creamy milk-creme pudding topped with crumbled biscuits. You can easily arrive at the restaurant for lunch via the ferry from Hong Kong or stop by when in the Macau area …its definitely well worth the visit.