I've finally run across a restaurant that I really want to go back to, many many times.

It's called the 葡京茶餐厅, the Lisbon Macau Restaurant. It serves a combination of Hong Kong classics and Macanese traditional dishes. It's a chain with several locations across the city. This is what City Weekend had to say about it:

Locals sniffing out a satisfying Macanese meal pack this rowdy shopping mall chain. Festive mosaics adorn the interior, which is decorated in a colonial spirit. A sweet Macanese coffee compliments the robust flavors of seafood fried rice, potato onion soup and curry chicken. Perfect for appeasing an eclectic palate.

This is what Dianping users have said:

“最喜欢的茶餐厅”之一。菜肴总体口味“偏淡”。招牌澳门炒饭分量“大得惊人”，足够“3个女生分”；咖喱牛腩“很好吃”，“半肉半筋”，“又酥又烂”。饮料里挚爱冻咖啡，“香味浓郁口感醇厚”，连杯子的长相都“很澳门”。 P.S. 消费不足100元不能刷卡。

And here's what Weird Meat had to say on its Shanghai "Top 10 Favorites" list:

Macau-style food, a brilliant blend of Cantonese and Portuguese. So much good stuff on this menu, from the won-ton soup to the African chicken. The ice milk coffee is so delicious but will keep you awake for a day or two.

So far I've been to the Super Brand Mall location twice, once on a field trip with my school and once on a date with Jodi. The first time I had the RMB 28 curry beef brisket with a side of rice, and it was enough that I almost finished it and felt very satisfied. The curry is pretty amazing: thick, oily and beefy, I'm sure it had been left slow-cooking in the kitchen for more than a few hours. I was very happy that I'd decided to order rice as a side dish because I ended up mixing the curry broth into it even after the beef and potato were gone. For desert I had a Portuguese egg yolk tart (葡式蛋挞), which was average: eggy and warm inside, but with a slightly toughened crust that made me suspect re-heating. I still think the best egg tarts I've had in Shanghai are the ones at a shop called Enjoy/Surprise(?) in the tunnel from New World to Nanjing East Road at People's Square, which has a pretty decent recipe and so much foot traffic that fresh tarts are always coming out of the oven.

The next time at the Lisboa with Jodi we spent about RMB 100 on several dishes. Of course, I had to let Jodi try the beef curry. The Macanese fried vermicelli with shrimp was a little sweet, and seasoned with fragrant fatty pork bits. As a vegetable we ordered a tri-colored dish of boiled corn, cucumber and carrot spilling out of a crispy paper-thin wafer bowl, a dish that was better looking than it was tasting: well-made, but not above par. The red bean ice came in a beer mug with a milk-tea straw, and was heavy on the red beans. Finally, the highlight of the meal for me was the cheapest item of our order, an RMB 10 pork chop sandwich: a tender, juicy pork chop on a crunchy French bun that almost reminded me of sourdough. If the restaurant provided the HK-standard spicy mustard I would have been in heaven.

So, besides the dishes I listed above, what makes me want to go back? Large portions, food that looks just as pretty on the table as it does on the menu, and a hearty selection of authentic Macanese dishes with no compromises to local taste. I'm going to try to organize a little friendly get-together around this place, so keep your ears open.

The Lisbon Restaurant has locations throughout the city. The one closest to our house is a short ride on the 798 to the Super Brand Mall, on the 6th floor. They take reservations at 021-50472155.