- Time Out Worldwide
- Travel
- Subscribe
- Register
- Search:
(click to vote)
Things to do in Macau including casinos, film, clubs, bars and restaurants
Hop in any taxi, tell the driver to go to Nga Tim Café in Coloane and say no more – he'll know exactly where to take you. While this waterside seafood joint has found its way onto several tourist radars, it remains famous and immensely popular among locals for its Cantonese chatter, clinking glasses, and serious chow. The setting is also hard to beat: Nga Tim is perched on the edge of the restored Largo Eduardo Marques right by the waters separating China from Macau, with the gorgeous São Francisco Xavier church as the dining backdrop.
Nga Tim’s menu is definitively Macau, serving a variety of Portuguese, Chinese, and Macanese dishes. With wet napkins on the checker red table cloths, it's obvious what you should be eating – things that will get your hands dirty. Skip the standard Macanese classics such as the Chinese fried chicken ($88 for half), which was crispy enough but a grease party, and go for the seafood. While shrimps, crabs, oysters can be cooked a myriad of ways, the classics are the Chinese styles: pan fried with salt and pepper, or tossed with black bean sauce, garlic and chillies.
The signature dish at Nga Tim are the drunken shrimps ($83 for a dozen), highly recommended for both their presentation and taste. Brought out in a glass bowl for you to make your selection, the live shrimps are then drenched in alcohol and spices. These drunkards are then thrown skilfully into a stone pot with hot coals and tossed to perfection. The shrimps come out juicy and full of flavour, fully cooked but not a tad overdone. While you can choose to dip them in ordinary soy sauce or soy sauce seasoned lightly with chillies, they’re best eaten without garnish – leaving one to enjoy the sweet savoury flavours.
Pair the seafood with one of Nga Tim’s signature fried rice plates (there are nearly ten on offer), which you’ll see on almost every table at the cafe. Like everything on the menu, the salty codfish variety ($45) with onions and eggs might be a bit too fishy for some, but it’s a delightful example of home-style Macanese cooking. Wash down dinner with a nice cold beer, they have Stella Artois on tap – probably one of the only things on the menu not from Macau. Bourree Lam
8 Rua Caetano, Coloane, (853)2888 2086. Daily 11.30am-midnight. Meal for two: around $300.