One of the oldest restaurants in Macau ‘A Vencedora’ reopens its doors to continue offering local culture and flavours
Translation Daisy Wong / Photos Eloi Scarva
The hundred year-old restaurant ‘A Vencedora’ made a grand comeback in July, after a brief seven-month hiatus. Third-generation co-owner Lam Kok Lon, had been managing the family restaurant together with his brother for over forty years, but in November last year they announced its closure, explaining that the next generation of the family were not interested in continuing the business. However, one local businessman, Simon Chan has now stepped up to save the business and maintain its legacy.
“I think it would be a shame for the city to lose this part of its history,” says Simon, who has been a regular customer of the restaurant since his childhood. “This place has a history of over a hundred years. If I let it close down, Macau will lose that local culture and history, and those local flavours that represent the city,” adds Chan, who was born in Hong Kong and came to Macau in the 1970s.
Simon is friends with the Lam family and recently managed to convince them to give him the space to continue operating the restaurant.
“Since they’re already old, the owners want to retire and their children are all abroad, so they don’t want to continue the operations. They stopped running the restaurant last year, so I went to talk to them,” says Chan.
The two-storey property in the centre of Rua do Campo where the restaurant is located is still owned by the Lam family, and Chan has signed an open-ended contract with the owner to run the establishment. The restaurant has now reopened with the same chefs, the same menu and most of the same staff. Simon also assures that he has not increased the prices.
Minchi, cod cooked with chickpeas, oxtail, bitoque and even caldo verde soup, as well as a selection of Portuguese wines, all remain on the menu to keep customers happy and satisfied.
“In principle, we want to preserve the flavours of the past,” says Simon, “We’ll keep everything as it was before, maintaining the standards at first and then improving them over time.”
‘A Vencedora’ first opened its doors in 1918 and its history spans generations. The restaurant’s founder, Lam Kuan, grandfather of the Lam brothers who currently own the business, was a cook on a ship in the service of the Portuguese Navy and learnt how to make Portuguese dishes there. Lam Kuan adopted ‘A Vencedora’ as the restaurant’s name to honour the ship on which he had worked and learned Portuguese recipes.
‘A Vencedora’ is one of the oldest restaurants in the city, surpassed only by Fat Siu Lau in terms of longevity. In the beginning, the clientele was mainly military personnel serving in Macau. In the 1940s, there were as many as 800 Portuguese soldiers stationed in Macau’s barracks, which meant that Portuguese restaurants began to spring up in the territory at that time.
Now that it has reopened, Simon is optimistic about the future success of the business and the return of its loyal customers, Portuguese, Macanese and local residents.
“I promise to develop the business, including maintaining the standard of service and food quality, otherwise they can revoke the contract,” he says with a smile. “So I’m going to work hard in this space, we’re going to do things right!”
