Cars, Food and the Ladies of Hong Kong & Macau: Nam Kee Claypot Rice 南記煲仔飯

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Nam Kee Claypot Rice 南記煲仔飯 - (Macau)

As usual, when one Google searches on this famous Macanese Shop using an ENGLISH name, it will just return them a page of totally irrelevant results. Such inefficiency really makes me think if I am missing out on many locals places when I travel anywhere else just because I can’t type in that native language! Nam Kee is better to be searched under their Chinese Characters name and hopefully I pasted in the right address below. It is a shop with around 50 years of history as a real charcoal enhanced Claypot Rice Specialist. They are located behind an hidden alleyway and most local Macanese already know about it. Even the neighboring Hong Kong travellers such as myself haven’t heard about here much until some locals pointed it out to me.

With 50 Years of History & onto their 2nd Generation -
Surprisingly not many people online have covered here, I guess the local Macanese people already take it for granted and just don’t post a lot about here online anymore.

Charcoal Grilled Claypot Rice -
Around the corner from here, they also do Charcoal grilled lamb Hot Pots. It is becoming a rare occurrence to see real Charcoals on Hong Kong side, due to strict rules with licensing issues. In Macau the rules seem to be more relaxed.

In Fact, this Alleyway should be familiar to a lot of Hong Kong people -
It’s exactly on the same street as 楊六記 Yeung Luk Kee. That shop sells cow innards during day time, whilst this shop occupies the same alley and sells Claypot rice at night.

Tea and Sweet Soy Sauce -

Menu – Again Written all in Chinese Only
How about a serendipitous adventure? The most abnormal items here are refined to Eels and Frog Legs, just randomly order I suppose!

Pork Lard Oil -
One needs to ask the staff for this sprinkling of guilty Lard Oil onto the rice,
it does add an extra whiff of aroma and umami hit.

Cured Pork Belly, Chinese Sausage and Frog Meat Claypot Rice -
This was really charcoal-like in the smells department. Although our cured pork belly was flavorsome it was dense in texture. The Chinese sausages were however great quality with a bursting of fat flavours, pork meat and wine contribution. The frogs meat were more superfluous but at least being tender enough in final execution! The rice was dry enough and smelt great but didn’t had a lot of rice taste this time around. Not a bad Claypot place. ~ 7/10