Macau's Spring Onion Chicken at Casa De Cha Long Wa

To begin with, Long Wa is a tea merchant located across the infamous Red Market (mercado vermelhão) along the inner harbor of Macau. In the 60s, this stretch was a bustling business port that was trading in everything from fish too everyday produce. The market was famous for fresh vegetables, shipped in from all over including China.

Long Wa tea house probably entertained the rich Chinese merchants who did their trade there before the casino boom of the 1970s. Since then, it is looked upon as a traditional tea house serving its signature Spring Onion Chicken.

First, let me warn you about the tea house. It serves some of the best Chinese teas found on the planet....and you don't go adding sugar and milk to it. The Pu-er tea is nothing sort of splendid and goes well with the Dim Sum.

Since I am going to talk about the Chicken, I will leave out the Dim Sum. This will be for another post.

Getting back to the Chicken, it's fab. I must say that it may not be up to the same mark as that set in Singapore for Hainan Chicken rice but it comes pretty close. The chicken meat is smooth and moist. Flavored with bits of spring onions, you could be forgiven for thinking they were trying to pass of Hainanese Chicken Rice to their vocabulary but this is their own style. The chicken is fat, the layer of oil on the skin melts during cooking creating a texture that is hard to come by. And no, it is not steamed as you may be reckoned to assume, it is boiled in broth and then hung to dry.

There is a certain firmness found in the meat that tells you the chicken isn't ordinary broiler chickens. Farm raised to fatness, these fowls taste really good.

In traditional Hananese Chicken Rice, only mature egg-laying chickens are used as they have more flavor, here in Macau, it is no different.

Eaten on its own or with rice, it is a great comfort food for those who miss the Singaporean style Hainanese Chicken Rice, with the only exception being that in Macau, they don't have the chili sauce to go with it. Beyond that, I think I'll have this any day to keep the chill away.

Spring Onion Chicken @ Long Wa Tea House Macau