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Set up some years ago by a Portuguese lady who lived in Portugal’s former colony Macau for 20 years. Staff at the spacious restaurant are all Thai, wearing traditional dress and give dance performances and demonstrations of fruit and vegetable carving during dinner. Always the perfectionist, owner Luísa Castanheira imports all ingredients from Thailand, as she does with decorative objects which she uses for her restaurant or offers for sale in the restaurant shop. Dishes include Thai curry, grilled tiger prawns, marinated beef, steamed sea bass with ginger, leek and seasoning and served with rhai sauce. There are secluded areas available for private dining.
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Macau gambling tycoon Stanley Ho, concession holder of the Estoril Casino, close to Lisbon, set up the Mandarim inside the Casino some years ago because he felt that there was no Chinese restaurant that did justice to his home country’s cooking. Connoisseurs agree that presently the Estoril Mandarim is Portugal’s best Chinese restaurant, with an all-Chinese staff and a kitchen team headed by Peng Kuan U, one of the world’s best chefs of Chinese cuisine (according to the International Who’s Who in Cooking). Popular dishes include dim sum (lunch only), Peking duck, fried lobster, sautéed shrimps in a bird’s nest and swallows’-nest soup—all very reasonably priced.
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