Fado is one of my (new-ish) go to spot for Portuguese food, a little more contemporary, beautiful modern setting with lots of light and they cook certain dishes at your table. It’s a little less heavy than the usual dishes you’d order at the Portuguese restaurants in down. I’ve been here several times now and the food is consistent and good, service is spotty and slow, but all is forgiven for the good food at a super reasonable price point. A two course lunch set starts at 158MOP.
The name Fado is a music genre expressing intense emotions and melancholy, expressing the sense of lost and longing of women who have to bid their beloved sea men farewell as they embarked on long voyages of discovery.
We’ve been here several times and most times we’ve done both a la carte and a set. Definitely recommend the bacalhau to start, but the meat croquettes are a little too strongly flavoured and meaty but tart. Then there was the chorizo bread that tasted like great corn bread.
We were recommended the fried olives which I never thought about ordering and they were great- basically olives in bread crumbs batter and deep fried.
For me, the white wine garlic clams have always been the litmus test dish for a Portuguese restaurant and these were consistent and always flavourful.
My Portuguese friends recommended the Bacalhau à Bras on the à la carte menu. I asked the chef about the provenance and it’s named after a famous chef from Bras who created the dish. Here, slivers of cod are cooked at the table with eggs, garlic, and skinny shoe string potatoes all mixed together, garnished with parsley, black olives and chives.
We ventured to more cod dishes since the menu actually did many variations of it, including a cream of cod soup (which was heavy and odd, somehow fish in a cream soup perhaps isn’t the best idea?). We ordered the bacalhau with mashed potato and mayo which was deliciously dense, but the mayo stole the show with the mash and the cod came as an afterthought in the form of texture.
Another home style dish often found on a Portuguese restaurant menu is the bread stew, a dish that’s quintessentially Portuguese and a slice of country style food – where stale and leftover bread goes into this filling stew. Here, the seafood bouillon base made the usually heavy mushy bread stew an appetising main.
The tomato cheese tart that was on the set lunch menu was interesting, however a little heavy with their puff pastry base… the lamb main course was uneventful and overcooked.
Open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Lunch begins from 12pm. Lunch sets from 158+MOP, there’s a decent wine list of Portuguese wines and if you order à la carte, it works out to about 600+MOP for two persons.
Fado, Hotel Royal, Estrada da Vitoria 2-4, Macau, tel: +853 2855 2222.
