30 Jan Margaret’s Café E Nata, Macau

Margaret’s Café E Nata is one of the two cafés in Macau famous for its Portuguese egg tarts. This small and quaint cafe had one queue for ordering and another for collecting orders that weren’t ready. The tarts were so popular there was almost always a long collection queue – they couldn’t make tarts quickly enough. Each tart was only 8MOP each (just under 1AUD). There are other items on the menu, but the majority of customers buy the tarts with maybe a hot drink. Unless the person was getting take-away, people received their tarts on a paper plate, sometimes piled high with tarts to share. For some reason we were given a box. When the tarts finally arrived they were piping hot as they had just come out from the oven, and what a guilty pleasure they were. The tart was nice and crispy and the egg custard was smooth but not too sweet. There wasn’t a lot of caramelisation on top of all them – a feature supposedly characteristic of Portuguese tarts – but seeing as it was my first really good Portuguese egg tart I didn’t care; I was quite happy to be naive.