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MACAO: Long before fusion cuisine became a trend on global menus, Macao was already its home, where centuries of Portuguese presence gave rise to a culinary heritage that spans continents and diverse traditions.

A small city in the Pearl River Delta on China’s southern coast, Macao came under Portuguese colonial administration in 1557. At that time, it was already part of regional maritime trade networks, but its connections expanded as part of the Portuguese Empire, which at its height in the 17th century stretched across four continents.

With this vast intercontinental reach, Macanese cuisine is not just Portuguese food with Chinese ingredients; it blends the cooking practices and techniques of Africa, Europe, South America, and Asia.

“When the Portuguese first came to Macao, they actually set sail from Portugal, passed through Africa, through India, and then went to places like Malacca in Southeast Asia, and eventually Macau,” said Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes, director of the Macao Government Tourism Office.

“They brought some food from Portugal, but they also picked up a lot of spices, different foods along Africa, India. So, by the time they got to Macau, they also had to use local ingredients, and that’s how, eventually, fusion food, Macanese food, was born.”

From Portugal and its Atlantic islands, Madeira and the Azores, the Portuguese established footholds along the coasts of Africa — in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau. In Asia, besides Macao, they controlled the ports of Goa in India and Malacca in present-day Malaysia, connecting Europe to spice and silk trade routes.

Across the Americas, Brazil became the empire’s largest and most profitable colony, while Portuguese merchants also reached the Caribbean and Guianas.

The defining feature of Macanese cuisine is the eclectic blend of these ingredients, reflecting the far-reaching influence of Portugal’s maritime empire — Mediterranean herbs, African piri-piri peppers, Indian turmeric, Indonesian and Malaysian coconut milk, South American tomatoes and potatoes, and Chinese Cantonese aromatics and versatile cooking methods.

UNESCO recognized Macao as home to the world’s first fusion food when it designated the city as Creative City of Gastronomy in 2017.

One of the most iconic Macanese treats, directly reflecting Portugal’s maritime history, is the oval-shaped fried fish cake, in which the main ingredients are potatoes and bacalhau — dried cod preserved in salt to last through long sea journeys.

“Interestingly, bacalhau originally did not come from Portugal. It’s a very big cod fish, which is fished in the Nordic countries,” Senna Fernandes said.

“(But) codfish became the representation of Portuguese food or Macanese food because it was something which actually was brought to us by the Portuguese, although it was not a fish that plied the waters around Portugal.”

A different example of this fusion is African chicken. Legend has it that a local chef created the dish after being inspired by his travels to Mozambique. The chicken is marinated in chilies, onions, and garlic, then coated in a coconut–peanut sauce and grilled until tender and slightly caramelized. Its spice blend includes bay leaves, turmeric, soy sauce, and coconut milk — ingredients that came together from Portugal, through India, Southeast Asia, and China.

Despite its name, the dish is as absent from African cuisines as another one — the Portuguese egg tart — is from Portugal. Both are quintessentially Macanese creations.

The egg tart only became a signature Macao street food toward the end of colonial rule, introduced in the 1980s by a British-born chemist, Andrew Stow, whose original bakery in the Coloane area stands to this day.

One of the changes Stow made to the traditional European egg tart recipe was adding cinnamon and lemon peel to the yolk mixture, making it more flavorful and creating a surface that is blistered and slightly burnt, like a creme brulee.

“Somehow, he decided to toy around with the idea of making egg tarts his way, and he experimented with different combinations, and finally came to this egg tart, which is now what we call Lord Stow’s egg tarts,” Senna Fernandes said.

“It’s very much loved … Eventually, some people from the entertainment industry came over and tried out the egg tart and they started to talk about it, and then it caught on and has been a very, very big hit until now.”