Richmond – Pacific East Mall - Macau Cafe

[rworange]

Part 2 of my little trip to Pacific East Mall … getting tips for the restaurants I plan to visit.

It’s interesting how different Hong Kong style cafes can be. Here's a Chowhound Digest article with mention of Macau Café
http://www.chow.com/digest/1871

Previous Chowhound reports have favorably mentioned …
Portuguese-style curry chicken rice
baked seafood spaghetti

KK wrote:

“Their char shiu with rice and veg was fantastic though very fattening (bacon goodness). It turned out they used the pork neck meat cut, and it tasted like it was charcoal grilled with some honey (almost similar to the Zen Peninsula Millbrae appetizer dish)”

It seems like it has the same owners as Asian Pearl in the same mall. I could only pull up this cached version of a Sacrament Bee review of New Canton In Sacramento. If you scroll down to the highlighted words there’s some interesting info on the Culinary Wonderland group
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:NxmM1sdBqGYJ:www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1Y1-103483952.html+Richmond+%22Macau+Cafe%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=us

That might explain the live fish tank. Also on Yelp someone mentioned you can also select a fish from Asian Pearl to eat at Macau. Don't know if this is true or not or how that works.

Here’s what I’m trying to decide on … any help would be appreciated

Thick gruel of rice in supreme broth with abalone and pork
Rice soaked in supreme broth with pork and seaweed
Porridge with poached egg and beef
Roasted pork Macau style
Hawk style jelly fish
Rice ball with xo sauce
Empress chicken
Marinated beef steamed in rice clay pot with poached eggs
Roasted duck with taro in rice clay pot
Braised fish belly in casserole
Stir-fried wiled mushrooms with ox tongue
Fried egg noodles with pickled greens
Sausage fried rice Portuguese style
Japanese teriyaki beef with poached eggs over rice
Sizzling Macau beef short ribs
Stir-fried prawns with poached egg over rice

I’m leaning toward getting the gruel … never had gruel … it sounds so Charles Dickens.

Maybe something with poached eggs … probably the beef claypot … tho I like sizzling dishes AND short ribs.

It’s a nice-looking restaurant in beige tones across from 99 Ranch Market

Previous Chowhound report
http://www.chowhound.com/topics/41578

Macau Cafe

3288 Pierce St. #C-136
Pacific East Mall
Richmond, CA 94804
[phone]

[rworange]

link

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Orchid Bowl Cafe
3288 Pierce St, Richmond, CA 94804

[lexdevil]

The roast pork Macau style is great, and you'll hate yourself for eating it! A very more-ish slab of roast pork belly with crispy skin, served with hoisin sauce. Very dangerous!

The Macau style beef short ribs were nothing special. Meat was pretty tough, and they're very western. We're talking gloopy, bordering on British, beef gravy.

I liked the beef clay pot. It's homey, comfort food. Lots of rice. It does take nearly a half hour to prepare, and I'm not entirely sure it's worth the wait. I'd probably opt fried rice to save time in the future.

Sadly, Macau Cafe no longer serves dessert (I think they used to do both milk and egg custard), but you can grab a good Portuguese custard tart next door at Sheng Kee to end your meal in fine Macanese style. Of course, after that and the roast pork, you'll probably need to call Roto Rooter to have your arteries cleared.

[Han]

Tried the roast pork Macau style - had a much better version at WM Cafe in Fremont. So far the best version is in Singapore and Indonesia.

Had the chicken steak: very tasty but prefer sauce on the side. Did not care much for the onion sauce. Probably black pepper sauce is better

Had a fantastic mushroom dish with sugar snap peas(?). At least 4 or 5 different mushroom types sauteed in slightly spicy sauce. This is a star dish IMO.

The wonton soup was decent. Nice broth and the wonton had lots of shrimps.

Saw many interesting dishes here. Hope some will chime in on other things they tried.

Some interesting dishes that I saw on menu:
-Some kind of spicy noodle soup
-Pork leg/cold dish ?
-Rice claypots
-Hainam rice
-Fish broth noodle
-many others looked very intriguing

[Melanie Wong]

At one time you were fascinated with jook (rice gruel), did you try any then?
http://www.chowhound.com/topics/30456#131142

Here's more about the group.
http://www.chowhound.com/topics/39423...

[rworange]

Yeah ... at Fat Wong's ... so this is the came as jook/congee/porridge? What confused me was they mention all three on the same menu. I thought gruel might be different.

I'm still intending to buy some congee to put those ginko nuts in. It seems 99 Ranch has congee for $2 on the weekends.