B's detour day 3: Macanese family-style

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One of the main items when I convinced B to make a detour to come visit me was a visit to Macau. While Hong Kong has always been a great destination, I've always felt that fine dining in Macau is a better deal - and it's easy to understand why. So I booked us a car to cross the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge and, thanks to some unscheduled stops, checked in to the Grand Lisboa Palace more than an hour later than expected.

Which is how we arrived at La Famiglia on Taipa around 1½ hours later than the time of our original reservation. I had asked for recommendations for restaurants which are more Macanese and not just serving Portuguese cuisine, and I decided to check out this one.

Pastéis de bacalhau - these were pretty decent. On the dry side but still tasty.

Chamuças de porco - these samosas were also pretty decent.

Hits and misses in Macau

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We've been attending events associated with Asia's 50 Best Restaurants over the last few days, and it's very tempting - for someone like me, especially - to stick to the fine dining establishments inside the casino hotels here.  Apparently The Great One felt the same way, so we made plans to escape and explore the rest of Macau a little...

While I did sample some of the finger food being served at the party after awards ceremonies last night, The Great One spent some time filing her article right after the announcement and Gaggan's press conference.  So she came back to the pool deck starving, and as lots of people were going out for supper, we figured we'd go and grab a bite, too.

I had long heard about mud crab congee (水蟹粥) as one of the famous supper items in Macau, but I have never had the stomach space for it when in Macau.  So I was pretty determined to get me some tonight.  After consulting KC's Macau dining guide, the 5 of just jumped into taxis and headed for Yat Gor Gourmet (一哥美食).

I was in the second taxi to arrive at the restaurant, and I found myself facing this...  They were filming the cook who was making steamed rice flour rolls (腸粉).

Bday in Macau: no more Bordier

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After a reasonable night's sleep for once, we got up and went out for our morning rounds.  Knowing what was to come once we sat down for lunch, we wanted just enough nourishment to keep the hunger pangs at bay.  Margaret's Café e Nata is just a stone's throw away from the Grand Lisboa Macau, and seemed like the perfect place for us.

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It had started to rain this morning, and we were pretty lucky to get ourselves seats at one of the tables under the awning.  We were pretty disciplined and decided to take just one pasteis each, washed down with coffee.

Girls' trip to Macau: a day without Michelin

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I'm spending the weekend in Macau, accompanying Hello Kitty on a "girls' weekend" that somehow turned into a "couple's weekend" for the two of us.  As I'm trying to get my ass back on a diet - and having already had way too many big meals just a week-and-a-half into the new year, I wanted to take it easy on the eating today.

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After getting off the ferry, we grabbed a taxi to our lunch spot - and got dropped off at the junction of Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro and Rua dos Mercadores - since the taxi driver didn't feel like turning into the side street.  This ended up working out fine for us, because we decided to go into Loja das Conservas to replenish our stock of canned seafood.  We also discovered that there's a new shop boss, and while I was busy spending money, Hello Kitty was busy petting her.

Lunch was at Loja Sopa da Fita Cheong Kei (祥記麵家), a local favorite. It's been a long time since my last visit, so I figured I'd get some of their signature plates in my belly...

Signature tossed noodles with shrimp roe (招牌蝦籽撈麵) - I remembered that they like to add soy sauce to tossed noodles here, but I had completely forgotten that in this shop, the flavors of the soy sauce pretty much overpowered the flavors from the shrimp roe they gave us... which was a real shame.  On the plus side, there's not much alkali flavor in the noodles themselves (and those would have been covered up by the soy sauce, too...) and the texture was reasonably soft and supple.

The portion today looked a little smaller than I had remembered, but that didn't bother me much today.

Breakfasts and sweets in Macau

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I've been back in Macau again over the last 2 weekends, and I try not to miss a chance to hit up some local spots for breakfast.  As I'm not exactly local, from time to time I'll look to my friend KC for help... since he does come to Macau a helluva lot more than I do.  So for homework, I do a combination of scrolling through his Facebook page and flipping through the old trusty Macau guidebook that he published a couple of years ago.

Café Nam Ping (南屏雅敘) is pretty old school, and its location not far away from St. Paul's means it gets its fair share of tourist traffic.  The three of us trekked here looking for some coffee and sandwiches.

An idyllic afternoon

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I'm not exactly a Macau regular, but I've been here enough times over the years.  Not long after I landed in Hong Kong in the mid-90s, I was taken to Macau to have lunch at the famous Fernando's.  For years it was the most popular restaurant with many expats from Hong Kong, and remained pretty much the first place that came to mind when asked about Macau.  I've always thought the food was pretty good there, and loved dishes like their suckling pig and pan-fried prawns.  I've made many trips to that little house at the end of Hac Sa Beach.

Today I tried out the restaurant at the other end of Hac Sa Beach.  Miramar comes highly recommended by my friend KC's Macau food guide, and as it happens it is literally a few minutes' walk from the Westin Resort Macau.  When it was time for lunch after the conference, I simply dragged my little suitcase over from the hotel.

I debated about whether to order the dishes recommended by KC, and was really tempted to order some suckling pig, but settled on a couple of my own choices in the end.

Lisboa tour 2012: Guincho a Galera

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A mere 3 hours after lunch ended, the bunch of us gathered again and headed to the Hotel Lisboa across the street.  The venue for dinner was Guincho a Galera, the Portuguese restaurant occupying the former home of Robuchon a Galera.  This is the international outpost of Fortaleza do Guincho, a restaurant outside Lisbon with a Michelin star.

I wasn't the least bit hungry, and sat at the dinner table with a blank and defeated look for about the first hour while the rest of the gang discussed what to order.  I had just about managed to get rid of enough alcohol from my system as we were being served our complimentary wines…  In short, I was a party-pooper most of the evening...

2010 Bacalhôa Chardonnay Cova da Ursa - big nose of toasty oak, mineral, lemon, ripe, a little sweet with a hint of vanilla.  Not bad at all.

No more Nino

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I haven't been to Nino's Cozinha for a long time, and was thinking of doing something a little out of the ordinary tonight.  My friends very kindly obliged me, booked a table a week in advance, and made sure to reserve a quarter of a roast suckling pig.  I hadn't touched alcohol in almost 3 weeks and was very much looking forward to tasting a couple of bottles.

I arrived to find the couple fuming.  Apparently the restaurant has run out of pig, and insisted that my friend never reserved it.  The waitress had also apparently not followed instructions when it came to wine service.  Looks like we were off to a great start...

A date with Joël

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I've been looking forward to today for some time.  I went back to Macau and made a long-overdue visit to Robuchon a Galera.  The man himself was in town and in the kitchen, and I wanted to see what he would come up with for these gala dinners.

After barely catching the scheduled ferry, Froggie and I made our way to Henri's Galley for lunch.  At the launch party for WOM Guide Macau a couple of days ago, Fergus had recommended this as the place he goes to when in Macau, so we decided to check it out.  Actually Froggie flipped a coin, and the other side was Afonso III.

Not wanting to get the same dishes I'd always go for, I left the ordering to Froggie.  She started with caldo verde - which I didn't have coz I knew I didn't have the capacity for it.  Soon the ameijoas a portuguesa came and I dug in right away.  The clams were pretty tasty in the white wine sauce, and the cilantro added the fragrance while red chili peppers provided a little kick.  Yum.

Even though I wasn't responsible for the ordering, we ended up having bacalao à brás anyway! This was such an interesting version... The potato on top were in such thin shreds, then deep-fried in very high heat... making them very fluffy.  The bacalao came in larger chunks, making them extra chewy.  Very delicious.

We asked the waiter for recommendation on rice, and he pointed us to arroz chau chau.  I've always thought this was a hilarious name for fried rice...  Anyway, this was something that I wouldn't normally order, but it turned out to be pretty good.  The rice was fried with minced beef, tomato, smoky chouriço and ham.  Tomatoes in the fried rice... definitely ain't Chinese!

We were stuffed, so walked around a little in the old city center.  I picked up a few jars of shrimp roe at Loja Sopa da Fita Cheong Kei (祥記麵家), and eventually we made our way to Margaret's Cafe e Nata for their famous Portuguese egg tarts.  I managed to try out the "original" from Lord Stowe's earlier this year, and was curious to see what the ex-wife offered.  There were simply too many people around, so we grabbed a couple to go and had them back at the Mandarin Oriental Macau, where Froggie was staying.  The tarts were definitely pretty custard-y, more eggy than creamy - closer to the Cantonese egg tarts than the Portuguese pasteis.  Pretty yummy nontheless.

We met up with our friends for a quick drink at Bar Cristal at Encore - mocktail for me - before crossing the road to dinner.  We ran into SONFA and her hubby, who also had reservations for dinner.

While we waited for our last dinner guest, we started on the 1989 Trimbach Riesling Clos Ste Hune Vendages Tardives.   Definitely petrol, and the nose was very ripe, round and sweet.  Notes of peaches, botrytis, orange marmalade, a little floral... and some butter in the end.  Definitely some residual sugar, something between kabinett and spätlese.  A very beautiful wine.

The bread trolley was rolled around and we chose from the wide selection.  Bread at Robuchon has always been a serious affair, and it was not different here.

But the real excitement tonight was the butter.  They finally got around to getting themselves some from Bordier!  Waiters came and used a dinner spoon to scrape butter from these two big lumps... very impressive indeed.  Robuchon bread + Bordier butter... heaven!

We started with tarte fine croustillante aux cèpes de sous-bois.  Cèpes are in season, and shrooms are always yummy when you sautée them.  Nice layer of finely chopped cèpes in between thin layers of crispy filo.

Le gazpacho de cerises avec un lacté de brebis givré aux éclats de pistaches à l'huile de basilic - interesting to see that this was made with some cherries, which gave it a deeper color and slightly higher acidity.  The goat's milk sorbet was really milky, and the interplay between savory and sour flavors was fun.  We also saw the first appearance of the gold foil...

We ran out of the white wine but weren't ready for the red, so we asked for the wine list to get ourselves another bottle.  We must have looked like tech retards, because they didn't give us their new, cool iPad-based wine list...which my friends at the other table got to play with.  We got the traditional big book instead.  Pout.  OK... so the wine list is impressive in its original form, too... It is, after all, pretty much the largest and best wine list in Asia!

The 1992 Henri Clerc Batard-Montrachet took a bit of time, but we had a fine bottle of wine in front of us when it finally opened up.  The nose was pretty funky at first, with a hint of straw, wheat and definitely camphor - smelling like some kind of Chinese medicinal tonic that one rubs on oneself to relieve muscle aches...  From the second pour, some toast emerged along with ripeness and sweetness, with corn and almost nutty nose.  Very perfurmed on the palate as well as the finish.  Not bad at all!

Le duo de foie gras d'oie et d'artichaut violet en salade mêlée aux copeaux de parmigiano reggiano - nice, but honestly I was disappointed in the quantity of foie.  For the first time that I can remember, I actually thought artichoke was delicious - which is kind of an achievement.

Le crémeux d'oursins tremblotant sous une émulsion mousseuse au wasabi - very interesting dish, except for another appearance of the cursed gold foil.  The sea urchin was creamy and sweet, while I was surprised by the light flavors of the wasabi emulsion.  Underneath it all was a delicious lobster mousseline.  The most interesting dish of the evening.

Le homard des Iles Chausey Rôti au beurre salé et un bouillon épicé de riz nacré aux pistils de safran - a very yummy dish, flavor-wise.  Soooo full of lobster flavor... I couldn't help but lap up the bouillon.  The young peas were not peeled, and I found a couple of them with pretty thick skins.  The lobster was unevenly cooked, and I found a couple of pieces to be a little overdone.  Downright disappointing in this respect.  An opinion which SONFA expressed and I concurred.

Le poulet fermier ivre de Château Chalon mitonné doucement en cocotte, fricassée de craterelles et de girolles au jus - Froggie just about flew off the handle when we received the menu by email.  Initially it was "poulet de Loue", which is nothing special and one can buy in any Froggie supermarket...  It did turn out to be an interesting way to do chicken, broiled in a cocotte with fragrant shrooms like girolles and black trumpets.  The use of Château Chalon was pretty interesting, and the fragrance somehow reminded me of Taiwanese sesame oil chicken (麻油雞), where rice wine was used.  Chicken itself was pretty tender and juicy... The famous Robuchon mash was as divine as ever, but I was already too stuffed to be able to finish it...

1985 Dominique Laurent Latricieres-Chambertin - we pre-ordered this bottle, and the sommelier decided to open it as we were running out of our first bottle of white - without realizing that we would be ordering another bottle.  It was a while before we got to taste the bottle, and we were concerned that there would be too much aeration.  Nose of mushrooms and grilled meats.  Pretty muted at first but developed well after a while.  Light and elegant.

Les baies noires de Bourgogne glacées, lait d'amande douce, caramel Bourdaloue, paillettes de cassis - the kitchen redeemed itself somewhat with the first dessert.  Lots of cassis around, which I love dearly, and the sweet almond cream was pretty rich and yummy.  But the killer was the Bourdaloue - a mini version that was simply awesome... especially the caramel on top.  Wow!

Une symphonie chocolatée, compote de mendiants à la liqueur de mirabelles - the chocolate thingy was pretty good... nicely balanced by the slightly sour compote at the bottom.

These were pretty cute, but I just didn't have any room for them...  I was way too stuffed, and just a little buzzed from all the wine...

We were all given bags containing a very love lemon pound cake on the way out.  This moist, fragrant cake made for a great breakfast the next morning...

Joël and his team came out to greet the diners, as was expected.  Just when it was to be our turn, he and the team abruptly ran off somewhere else.  I thought it was gonna be a repeat of what happened to be at Arzak, where Juan Marie Arzak repeatedly dissed my friends and I by running off and not talking to us.  Fortunately Joël did return some time later, and Froggie totally became a groupie by yapping with the man in French.  She got her wish of hugging him and didn't even come close to be tackled by his team of security guards...

Honestly, the dinner was a little disappointing.  While there weren't any "bad" dishes, there were very few surprises - and not a whole lot of creativity.  I guess the premium I paid was for the opportunity to take a picture with Joël...

The wine service was... shall we say... "commercial".  Basically Mathieu Gaignon - the sommelier - and his staff just kept refilling our glasses quickly.  I guess they were trying to sell more bottles of wine... and I find this type of behavior really annoying.  What had me really fuming, though, took place before we even arrived in Macau.  We had asked Mathieu for the evening's menu since we wanted to choose the right wines to match our food.  Mathieu replied that the menu had yet to be finalized, then proceeded to suggest that we "start with some Champagne, have some white wines then a red wine."  OH REALLY.....?!  Is THAT how you're supposed to do it...?  What a revelation....

Anyway... I made the mistake of booking a late-night ferry as I didn't want to stay in Macau overnight.  It was definitely a painful journey back to Hong Kong...

Nino x4

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A couple of my friends wanted to try out the Macanese/Portuguese restaurant I had been telling them about, so I booked a table at Nino's Cozinha's new location and grabbed a few more friends.

Ever since Nino's first opened they have been busy like there's no tomorrow, and it became very hard to get a table on short notice.  They've recently moved to QRE Plaza and took up two whole floors, and it looks like they have easily 4x the space that they used to have.  On this Saturday night both floors were packed when I arrived.  Business is going Gang Busters.

At first it seemed difficult to get anyone to pay attention to me as I stepped off the elevator - all the staff was busy dancing around in their routine.  An observant waiter eventually came over and led me to our table, and throughout the evening I found him to be well-trained and courteous - as long as I could get his attention.

The menu at Nino's is fairly extensive, and my friends soon had that bewildered look on their faces.  So the decision was left to moi...as I'd been here a few times before.

Lulas salteadas com alho cebola e picante - the calamari was pretty nice, and the spicy chili sauce had a nice kick to it.

Bacalhao à braz - OK, OK... so I order this dish everytime I'm in a Portuguese/Macanese restaurant...but I really love it!  The dish looked a little different tonight, and the eggs and onions tasted a little more soggy than usual - thanks to the addition of tomatoes, but the shredded potato was crispy and yummy as usual.

Arroz chau-chau á moda Macanese - I still remember cracking up back in 1996 when I first found that the Portuguese expression for fried rice is "arroz chau-chau".  Well, I wanted to try something different here, and the Macanese fried rice at Cafe Florinda (澳門茶餐廳) is one of my favorites.  Unfortunately the version here is a complete disaster.  The rice was soggy, and the ingredients were chopped into pieces which I find too small.  I like the big chunks of chourico and other meats in my rice... Oh and one other complaint - why the hell was the rice served so early during our dinner?!

Rabo de boi guisado - one of our resident froggies requested oxtail, so here we are.  The meat was tender and came off the bone easily, and the carrot and tomato-based sauce was pretty yummy, especially with the use of cloves.

Couve branca assada com bacalhau e alho - yeah, this looks like a Chinese veggie dish, but with the twist of adding the yummy bacalhau to impart that savory seafood flavor.  I can't get enough bacalhau, and I tried to restrain myself tonight so that my friends don't get an OD of it...

Frango assado com piri piri - I ordered the piri-piri chicken for its authenticity instead of the Macanese chicken with its curry sauce.  I still don't think they give you enough of the sauce, so next time I'm gonna ask for extra.  In Portugal the chicken comes without the sauce, and you simply add however much you want from the bottle on the table...

After a long wait, the camarao com pimenta no forno arrived.  Earlier, one of my friends caught a whiff of the smell from another table and thought they were serving stinky tofu (臭豆腐). Well, the smell of that much peppercorns can be a little pungent, but I would prefer to call it fragrance.  The prawns were yummy, and I still picked up a few peppercorns and rolled them between my fingers liked I've done on previous visits.

We were still kinda hungry so we ordered the arroz de pato.  Not quite happy with this, and the group agrees.  As my friend remarked, this does taste and smell like Chiuchow duck - with the classic fragrance of five spice (五香).  The rice, unfortunately, wasn't up to par.  It was moist enough that the rice grains stuck together, but in this case I actually prefer them to be either soggy (because there was so much sauce) or just a bit dry and chewy.  In any case the rice on top wasn't crispy at all, which should have been the case.  Oh well, maybe they were rushing this one because they didn't want us to wait half an hour...

I brought along two bottles of wine, and after making sure that no one objected to having them (why would they?) proceeded to serve them.

2005 Château de Sancerre Cuvée du Connetable - initially nose was a little muted, with lemon, minerals, toasty oak and a little bit of buttery notes.

2001 Marqués de Riscal Baron de Chirel - one of the bottles I carried back from the winery a few years ago.  A very nice wine, with sweet fruit, vanilla and smoky nose.  Full-bodied and still a bit tannic, with a long finish.

Will Nino's do well after this massive expansion?  I hope the food quality can remain high while the success doesn't go to the owner's head.  Remember Ingredients?

The Macau I never knew

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I was in Macau today to show the sights to a visitor from overseas.  It's been a while since I had walked around and gotten some local eats, so I decided to lead a mini "foodie tour" for us.  What's more, I decided to hit a few famous Macanese spots which I never got around to visit.

I passed by Loja Sopa da Fita Cheong Kei (祥記麵家) on my last visit without going in.  This is one of the famous noodle shops in town, and I wanted to stop in and buy some shrimp roe (蝦籽).  Since we had come all the way here, we decided to sit down and have something to eat.  Of course I was going to get a plate of tossed egg noodles with shrimp roe (蝦籽撈麵).  This turned out to be the disappointment of the day.  While I really liked the consistency of the noodles, for some reason soy sauce was added to the plate.  This easily overpowered the flavors of toasted shrimp roe.

We took a long ride to my next stop - Lord Stow's Bakery in Coloane Village.  I had heard about the shop opened by Englishman Andrew Stow which is famous for their Portuguese egg tarts, as well as Margaret's Café e Nata opened by Andrew's ex-wife.  I had never been to either locations, and I thought it was high time I tried them out.  Well, they were definitely pretty good.  The puff pastry was nice and yummy, and the custard was pretty decent.  But this IS the local/Asian recipe, and ultimately it was no match for the original pasteis de nata from Pasteis de Belem.  Those tarts I had back in 2006 were incredibly creamy that I could have eaten half a dozen in a sitting...

After taking my visitor through a quick tour of various casinos, it was time to grab some Macanese food for dinner.  A Lorcha (船屋餐廳) was small and packed, and we had no reservation... Fortunately Restaurante Litoral (海灣餐廳) was just a few steps away, with plenty of space to accommodate us.  I ordered up a few of my favorite dishes:

Camarões com alho - these de-shelled shrimps were cooked with loads of olive oil and yummy garlic salsa.  Needless to say, I greedily lapped up the yummy garlic olive oil at the bottom of the plate with the typical bread that comes in these restaurants.

Amêijoas à casa - ooooh yeah... a big pot of these clams was exactly what we needed.  Lots of onions and a little bit of chili and garlic to pick up the taste.

Caril de caranguejo - I ordered the curry crab and totally forgot that someone at the table is too lazy to eat crabs, so the big dish was left to the other two of us.  The curry sauce was typically salty, but I wish it had been a little lighter so that the sweetness of the crab meat would show through better.

Bacalhao à braz - do I ever step foot into a Portuguese restaurant without ordering this dish? NEVER!  The version here is not as dry and crispy as I normally prefer, but was yummy in its own way.

Arroz de pato - they did it pretty well here.  Big slices of chorizo and duck breast on top of a layer of rice crackling, with duck leg confit meat buried underneath.  The crackling was really nice, and I wish I could have eaten more of this.

Repolho branco assado na panela com alho - the cabbage stir-fried with garlic was just what we needed to balance things a little, but I was pretty full by this point and struggled to stuff more into my tummy.

I had serradura for dessert, and I thought this was pretty decent - very light and airy mousse.

The restaurant only serves Portuguese wine and I know next to nothing about these...so I asked for recommendations on a fruity wine.  The 2006 João Pires Branco Terras do Sado was kinda fruity and pretty easily to drink.

We were pretty stuffed by the end, and it was a good conclusion to our day trip.  I managed to visit 3 new places in Macau, and I'll continue mapping out more destinations on my next trip.

Sacrificing a pig

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There was a big gathering of chefs and foodies tonight, and a tiny suckling piglet no more than 2 weeks old was sacrificed to satisfy our appetites.  The venue of this ritual?  Nino's Cozinha.

The first to arrive was the pig - leitão assado no forno - which we pre-ordered.  I'm always happy to have roast pig, especially with that yummy layer of fat and crispy crackling.  But honestly, this isn't anywhere near the best pig I've had, and better value could be had elsewhere.  As in my last visit, I thoroughly enjoyed nibbling on an ear - which has puffed up like a soufflé potato chip...

A series of starters came next.  Bacalhao à braz remains one of my favorites.  It was already cold by the time I finished the pig and got around to it, but I still loved it.  The fragrance of crispy fried potato strips stir-fried with onions, eggs and bacalhao... Mmm mmm good!

Dobradinha com grão de bico guisado - the chickpea stew with ox tripe, chouriço and morcilla was delicious, with a base made from tomato and sweet peppers.  How can I say no to tripe and blood sausage?

Lulas asado na panela com alho cebola e picante - the sauteéd squid was very fresh and delicious, with the light taste of olive oil and "salsa".

Pasteis de bacalhao - these deep-fried balls of shredded bacalhao and potato mash are another favorite of mine.  I wish I had more than one of these, though...

Amêijoas à moda de casa - this is the usual clams in white wine sauce, but I only had one little clam...

Frango assado com piri piri - today's piri piri chicken was disappointing.  There wasn't enough sauce, and even then the sauce just didn't have enough kick.  My tongue was supposed to go numb from the Sichuan peppercorns!  Others at the table agreed with me, and there was lots of chicken leftover.

Rabo de boi guisado - the oxtail was pretty good.  The meat wasn't falling off the bone, and instead was slightly chewy.  I liked the tomato and carrot-based sauce.

Repolho branco assado na panela com bacalhao e alho - I love cabbage, garlic and bacalhao separately, and the combination of all three is even better!

Finally, two claypots of camarao com pimenta no forno - in my opinion the best dish in the house.  The mix of green, white and black peppercorns from Morocco was just amazingly fragrant.  The prawns today were much larger than the ones I had before, perhaps they chose to use different types due to seasonality.  The prawns were first pan-fried, then loaded into the claypots with the peppercorns and baked at 300 degrees.  The pan-fried garlic here was damn good, too.  One of my friends decided to break apart some of the grissinis and bury them in the peppercorns, letting the flavors infuse into the sticks. I should have tried one of them...

I was never very impressed with their desserts, so I decided to share a small piece of the lemon tart and passed on the serradura.

Amazingly the 11 of us only managed to drink two bottles of wine.  The 2002 Kistler Pinot Noir Kistler Vineyard was smooth on the palate with good concentration.  The 2006 Dr. Loosen Erdener Treppchen Riesling Kabinett had notes of lemon, minerals, a bit of plastic and was a little sweeter than I expected from a Kabinett.

We ended up having a lot of food leftover, which was a surprising and probably a function of the crowd eating less than they normally would.  No one even bothered to touch the costelas pimentão no forno. I think next time I will pass on the suckling pig, though...