Macau vegetarian food on a budget

To read about all things Macau click HERE. Honestly, Macau vegetarian food does exist, but it’s very expensive, at least for backpacker-types. We stayed in apparently a cheap hotel, which cost us around 3,000 baht per night. That’s not very cheap for a basic place. I guess they’re pushing the whole “Portuguese-style” marketing thing. Anyhow… FOOD.

Lots of Filipinos, or Macauians (the language seemed similar) had tiny shops with imported goods, but nothing too exciting. We were glad we bought bananas. It was like late afternoon, everything was closing, but we wanted to have some wine too (another thing we read online). We only found one bottle of non-overpriced wine walking for like two hours, so we took it! First day of walking was done, then: bath, wine, sleep.

The next day we saw how busy the city centre gets, so we navigated the little alleys. Near the theatre in Rua Centra we saw numerous trendy coffee shops: Isaac, IES Espresso, Terra, Jason. On the corner of the church marked number 5 on the tourist map, there’s Missm kafe, a Thai restaurant and a 7-11. You can grab a snack and just sit outside the theatre. It’s actually very easy to find a coffee spot if you avoid tourist-packed streets.

Free biscuits!

If you do walk the main streets, and manage to squeeze through, go inside the shops for free biscuit samples – many of them! Almond ones are super tasty. You’ll basically see the same thing: everyone buying huge amounts of these biscuits, queuing for beef noodles, or eating egg tarts. Egg tarts. Tarts tarts tarts everywhere, you’ll get sick of egg tarts. They’re just egg tarts. We walked to the main ruins, had an egg tart… that’s what you do!

After looking at all the tourists (yes, tourists – not tourist attractions) we went back to a quiet Terra cafe, had a pizza, some coffee. It was a nice place with modern interior, and huge windows wide open, so we felt like sitting outside. We found it quite difficult to find vegetarian food, simply because their cuisine is mostly Chinese with pockets of fancy Portuguese restaurants. And because there were no proper supermarkets, or markets in fact.

What did we eat? It’s hard to say. We didn’t go to restaurants as they were very pricey. We basically had lots of snacks… and wine. And big breakfast at the hotel so we wouldn’t go hungry anytime soon. If you don’t mind spending $$$ on food, you’ll find what to eat, even if you’re vegetarian. Make sure you bring a note in the local language though. It’s best to ask at your hotel for a note with what you can and cannot eat. Good luck!