The Real Macao

My friend Minh and I went on a total girl date to finally catch up on almost a year of now seeing each other. We thought we would finally scope out this hot spot, Macau. I had been here ages ago in their downstairs basement which is open for late night snacks, but I never even realized that was the same place. The upstairs is quite nice, the interior is well down and has a nice ambience overall. The service was actually really great, it was packed and the hostess really pulled it together and got us sat right away!

The drinks were really interesting and good but the food not so much. We tried a bunch of starters and one main to try to get a sense of the range but neither of us were impressed. We started with the octopus in olive oil and fennel, it was okay but texture was weird because it was like potato salad, instead of refreshing light olive oil salad. Then we tried the Portuguese meatballs. These were actually quite good, there was cheese in the middle oozing out of them. I guess they were lamb because the taste was quite strong and gamey. Last we have the Portuguese clams, which were served with chorizo, they were good but not amazing. For our main we tried these spicy cellophane noodles. They were really covered in peppers and chill and was tasty but not a lot of substance other than the ground beef that was on top. The food overall was a really weird mix of chinese fusion food with a Portuguese touch. I don't really get it and neither did our taste buds. Being both total foodies we felt the same with ever dish and decided we would go back for drinks but probably not for the food. Oh, and it might have just been a weekend thing, but the crowd was really bad.

Macao Trading Co
311 Church Street
New York, NY
macaonyc.com