Horta da Mitra Seng Kei Rice Rolls

Every time revisiting Horta da Mitra, it always immerse with a kind of simple, easy to find location looking for great food. They never appeared as one of the most busiest tourist attraction point; What they try to promote themselves was the true human touches of Macau’s neighborhood area and captured over hunderd years of homy-hearted ambience; that’s why their food culture can be preserved and well kept till now.

Turning right from the hundred-year Fok Tak Chi Temple; it leads to a long street alleyways to the marketplace, where you can see piping hot smoke emitting from the stalls. They open from seven every morning, everywhere loaded with joyful chit chattings, overloaded with human touches. This time here quickly introduce one of the best stall in one of the alleyways, Sister Yong Seng Kei Chinese Rice Rolls; which has been operating for nearly thirty six years more.

Thirty years of traditional rice rolls making

Seng Kei Rice Noodles has been in business for nearly thirty six years. They open only from Monday to Friday, 7 am to 12 noon, while stocks last. It is one of the typical local store operations within the neighborhood area. Currently managed by Sister Yong, originally run by her uncle and mum in the old days. Raised up in the Bird’s Paradise, she had a deep affection for this place so much; thus she decided to stay as a helper when grown up; She later even became one of the director’s of Fok Tak Chi Temple Association helping out.

In the previous article mentioned, every second day of secondary chinese lunar month, she actively anticipated in the earth goddess celebrations. It normally falls in the first week of March every year, and is one of the major annual events in Bird’s Paradise. The entire place is filled with a lively atmosphere; It is also a good time for all neighbourhood gathered and celebrate together.

The highly recommended food items

Seng Kei’s homemade soothing rice rolls and the minced fish with pork siu mai, has added in pork ingredients in it; and you just can’t stop it once trie.; It tastes so rich after given the first try. Their white congee is also homemade, by adding in ginkgo and yuba. It does not hold a heavy seafood scallop dried salty fragrances, and is naturally sweet and refreshing. I like Seng Kei Rice Rolls, which is so different from the other traditional way (with use of linen pulling technique rice rolls). It creates a thicker layer than the rests and gained a good chewing textures when bite.

The rice flour were made from mixing Thai rice and China mainland rice combinations, which creates unbelievable chewy, bouncy bites; in align with normal sesame and sweet seafood sauce; The sesame sauce are well mixed with peanut butter sauce, making up the taste even more outstanding. The sweet sauce were made from pure soy, grinded soy beans and sliced brown ​​sugar; it is not ending up too sweet either, and the mixed sauces bring out rice rolls smoothness, enhancing its unique tastes.

Bird Paradise recent years’ changes

After decades of gambling industries’ project development, most customers from Bird’s Paradise majority goes to casino employees; on the same side, the neighbors nearby have also became their daily patrons. Once lunch period hit at noon time, these focused groups will chnaged to nearby local students, government officials etc. coming out for lunch; it makes the whole district so lively.

Along with the epidemic influences, businesses around Bird’s Paradise remained strong these years; On the contrary, it also attracted some new stores participating in the food and beverage business segments, to get a fair bit of share from the big pie. Relatively speaking, it has brought in some competitive, positive changes to the market, providing vast majority local food diversifications, and has prospered the blessed land of Bird’s Paradise overall; And yet, it has fully loaded with human touches nearby, and brought in lots of business potential vitalities. Grown up from the Bird’s Paradise too, I also felt proud of this place too.