Macau’s wet markets are where fine dining restaurants get raw and real, offering fresh produce to kitchens at Riquexó and Mariazinha

Among Macau’s many offerings for visitors, dining is one of the most important and distinctive. And in delivering exceptional dishes, restaurants still rely on traditional wet markets to source key ingredients.

One of the best known of the city’s wet markets is the 88-year-old, three-storey Mercado Municipal Almirante Lacerda, popularly known as the Red Market. Here, vendors offer a variety of fresh ingredients including vegetables, meat, and different types of fish and seafood.

The products are all thoroughly checked to ensure they are safe to eat, said a local seafood vendor surnamed Chao who has worked at the market for 40 years. Freshness is critical to the taste, and he buys oysters and mussels sourced from Fujian, Shandong and Hainan Island, places on the mainland that provide the best shellfish in his opinion.

Chao said that he has sold to many restaurants in the city, while he also has many regulars who prefer to buy local not only for convenience, but as a way to get seafood products that are as fresh as possible.

The 70-year-old says that he enjoys working at the market and is always happy to see his customers, some of whom bring their own shopping bags, an effort he commends.

“Being able to work here makes me very happy. I’ve been doing this since I was young – and I’m happy to do it because this also gives me a job!” he adds.

Gou, another vendor at the market, echoed the sentiment. He has worked at the Red Market even longer: ever since he graduated from primary school aged 13, until now, as a 66-year-old.

He added that he found the local wet market brings a different kind of warmth to the local community. “I’ve been a market vendor for a long time,” says Gou. “I have watched some of my customers grow up from being little children, to getting married and having their own kids, who in turn accompany their parents as they shop at the market.”

Over the years, Gou also said he has not only sold fresh meat to the public, but to various restaurants, including upscale ones.

He emphasised the importance of the market being able to provide fresh meat, as well as taking care not to let any of it go to waste. Even though meat is available at supermarkets and online, the need for wet markets remains, the sexagenarian says.

One restaurant that regularly buys from different wet markets is Riquexó, an eatery founded by Sonia Palma, daughter of the late Macanese doyenne and foodie icon Aida de Jesus (aka Dona Aida to her friends and admirers).

Billy Chow and Moon Tong Yuet-yi now run the eatery, continuing its mission to serve traditional Macanese cuisine – officially the world’s oldest fusion cuisine, combining Portuguese, Chinese, Malay, Indian and other Asian elements.

The restaurant mainly serves local and Portuguese customers, but Chow is seeing more tourists keen to try the local cuisine, visiting from places such as the UK, France, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea and the mainland.

Popular orders include tacho (meaning “pot”), a Macanese variant of cozido à Portuguesa found in Portuguese cuisine, and the spicy galinha à africana.

In search of the ingredients they need, Tong, who is also in-house manager, said that she tours different wet markets each morning, especially the Red Market, São Lourenço and Patane – the latter being their go-to for seafood.

Outside finding the best prices, buying from a wet market ensures freshness, food safety and quality control, according to Chow. “We try our best to look for the freshest ingredients. If you eat something fresh, there’s a different taste. If it isn’t fresh, you can tell,” Chow notes.

Meanwhile, Mariazinha, a family-run Portuguese restaurant near the Unesco World Heritage-listed Ruins of St Paul’s, also buys some of its ingredients from local wet markets.

The restaurant, which is frequented by members of the city’s Portuguese community, places a high emphasis on authenticity in their dishes, according to owner Nelson Rocha. To maintain this, Mariazinha orders certain ingredients from Portugal, while ingredients like squid and shrimp, as well as vegetables, are bought locally.

The restaurant has formed an “ongoing friendship” with specific vendors at the city centre Red Market and São Domingos Market since it opened eight years ago, Rocha notes. “We try to help each other because that’s life. [The vendors] are small businesses, and [the restaurant] is also a family business,” Rocha says.