A Delta coffee, a cherry housed in a wooden barrel or a glass of Port wine. Accompany it with a custard tart. The taste of Portugal is also the smell of home at number 598 on Avenida da Praia Grande, in Macau, where the window full of these national sweets stands out among typical stores dressed in illuminated Chinese characters.
On the other side of the world, Nélson Silva places a dollar bill on the counter. In exchange, a bite of one of the most typical Portuguese delicacies and a sip from a small cup will take you, in seconds, to the roots. “It’s one of the few places, here, where we can still have something from Portugal. They say our weight is great, but it’s disappearing. The Chinese are buying everything and our business is evaporating”, comments the Portuguese who, on a break from work, seeks umbilical comfort more than 10 thousand kilometers from his homeland.
The Portugália Group contradicts fatalism. After having debuted in this market a decade ago, with the opening of a Portugália brewery, it opened the first space under the Manteigaria brand in January and the second last week, located in Taipa Village.
After all, since 2015 it has invested around 20 million patacas (approximately two million euros) in internationalization to this autonomous region on the south coast of mainland China. With 22 stores in Portugal, France (Paris), Spain (Madrid) and Macau, next year it will be time to arrive in Hong Kong.
“We want to open a Butter Shop in Hong Kong in the first quarter of 2026 and the objective will be, within two years, to have between four and six stores in that region. Then we will understand what the supply and demand are so that we can invest more. Asia is a very important market for us”, says Diogo Vieira, the group’s managing partner in Macau, to DN.
Opened almost a year ago, the first store sells, on average, a thousand custard tarts a day. “We are here to show Portuguese culture not only from a tourism perspective, but also so that the locals and the Portuguese community that lives here can feel a little closer to home”, he explains. The person responsible says that the arrival of the brand in Macau excited not only the Portuguese population who live in the region, but also the natives. “It aroused a great deal of curiosity. We had one or two months there with very high sales and a turnover of 100 thousand euros per month, which then, as expected, calmed down”, he says.
The introduction of this Portuguese pastry cake into Macanese daily life was not completely new, which made it easier for customers to embrace it. “In Macau we already have a culture of pastel de nata, or some type of pastry similar to pastel de nata, which is the local egg tart. It’s inspired by pastel de nata, but it’s not quite the same, it’s called egg tart. It has a texture a little more like egg-flavored pudding and ours is creamier. In a way, we have to educate customers, namely Chinese and tourists, about the differences between one and the other. Of course, for the Portuguese community, the arrival of Manteigaria in Macau was the culmination of us having a typical, traditional and original Portuguese product”, he explains.