“A Vencedora”, one of the city’s oldest restaurants, will be pulling down the shutters for the last time today, after over a century of serving Macau-style Portuguese food.
Located on Rua do Campo, the restaurant was founded and is owned by a local Chinese family but serves mainly Portuguese and Macanese dishes such as “minchi” (a dish based on minced or ground meat) and “bacalhau” (salt cod fritters).
This week, the announcement of the owners’ retirement has prompted massive queues of customers outside the restaurant, attempting to get their last taste and bid a fond farewell to the two brothers who own the place. Both of them yesterday were busy serving the large crowd of customers at noon and thus were unable to be interviewed.
Both are around 70 years old.
According to an article published by government-owned Revista Macau in 2018, the restaurant was established in 1918 by the current owners’ grandfather Lam Kuan, who used to be a cook on a Portuguese Navy ship for years where he learnt classic Portuguese recipes. The restaurant’s Chinese and Portuguese names have different meanings. In Chinese, its name “Kuan Kei” (坤記) coincides with Lam Kuan’s first name (“Kei” in Cantonese functions like an apostrophe in English), while its Portuguese name “A Vencedora” (meaning “The Winner”) was the name of the Portuguese vessel where he had worked and acquired his cooking skills.
Another article published by the government-funded cultural project “Macao Memory” noted that it is the second oldest restaurant in the city, following “Fat Siu Lau” that opened in 1903. It added that in the early years, its clientele was made up primarily of Portuguese military personnel and sailors who were looking for an affordable option to counter homesickness. As time passed, it began to broaden its client base to include the local ethnic Chinese and Macanese (locals of mixed Portuguese-Asian extraction) communities as well as Indian and African soldiers from other former Portuguese colonies.
According to a report published on Tuesday by Portuguese-language newspaper Ponto Final, the restaurant’s closure is due to the lack of interest in managing the business from the younger generation. The report quoted Lam Kok Lon, one of the siblings owning the restaurant, as saying: “My brother and I are getting old. I have no children to take over the business, and my nephews have no intention of joining the food service industry.”
A Portuguese customer in his mid-40s, who frequently had his meals at the restaurant, told The Macau Post Daily while queuing outside the two-storey eatery yesterday that it has become a part of his memory about Macau throughout his almost eight years living in the city. He said he loved the restaurant’s atmosphere in particular. “It is a very multicultural environment. Every time you go there, you can see not only a lot of Portuguese customers but also people of different nationalities. But at the same time, it feels very warm and welcoming.” Meanwhile, he expressed sadness over its closure. “It hurts my heart to see another representation of the city’s unique history going to disappear. It is a pity.”
Another interviewee, a local resident of Macanese origin, said that he had not dined in the restaurant for almost two decades. “Today I came with my wife, my son and daughter, but last time I came here I was still a child.” When asked for his thoughts on the food, he confessed that the taste of the dishes was “different to what they used to be”. However, he added, the interior of the restaurant has remained almost the same over the years, and visiting the place again has elicited nostalgia.
Customers queue up for lunch outside “A Vencedora” on Rua do Campo yesterday, the penultimate day of its 105-year existence as a restaurant serving Macau-style Portuguese food. – Photo: Gabriel Tam
