Cafes are currently on a big roll in Macau; everywhere you look little coffee shops designed to allure different types of customers are to be found, and IES Café is one of them.
IES café is located in a quieter part of Rua Central; it is strategically placed to offer people a kind of “escape’” from the busy streets of Senado Square.
Entering the café you immediately get a sense of ‘comfiness’; the design is aesthetically pleasing to the eye as well. A mixture of wood and metal clash in a colour combination of brown and black; the walls are painted white to give a little contrast to the dark colours of the tables and chairs. The hanging lamps surrounded by metal wire pull the whole look together.
Experienced in opening different types of restaurants in places such as Taiwan and the US, Lawrence Chen, owner of IES Café, visualized the kind of restaurant/café he wanted to open.
“IES is more than just a cafe where you can drink coffee and eat desserts; it is a place where you can relax and eat good food.”
A distinctive quality of IES is that the food they serve can almost be compared to that of hotel fine dining cuisine, but of course, without the associated price tag.
“I wanted to create a place where people can sit down, relax and enjoy delicious food without the “stuffy” atmosphere that hotel restaurants give people,” says Lawrence.
Besides your typical coffee and dessert combo, IES offers a variety of European and Western dishes as well. An interesting fact about IES is that the desserts and pastries they have in their café are also available in their very own bakery shop located at Pa Kat Chao.
Lawrence certainly knows that he has a lot of competition when it comes to trying to stand out from the number of cafes in Macau, but his passion for creating a “foodie cafe” pushes him to continue striving for his dream space.
IES
Rua Central 11, Macau
