A Food-Lover, Fascinated
Annabel Jackson's devotion to the taste and territory of the Macanese.
British food and wine expert Annabel Jackson has devoted a large part of her work to her passion for Macau, its culture and its cuisine. She is the author of several books about the region, currently lectures on Cultural Tourism at the Institute of European Studies of Macau and teaches about wine at Macau’s Institute for Tourism Studies. CLOSER sat down with the Macau devotée before her weekly class at IFT to learn about how she came to love the people and food of Macau and get her view on the challenges the future holds in store for the city and its culture.
Having moved to Hong Kong in March of 1989, British writer and journalist Annabel Jackson spent her first months in Asia amid the palpable tension preceding the June Fourth Incident in Tiananmen. Struggling to quickly acquaint herself with the alien culture and language and keep up with the big city’s frenetic pace, it wasn’t long before she discovered a haven of tranquility – and a familiar touch of Europe – in the Portuguese enclave to the west. “I came to Macau in June of 1989 for my birthday and stayed in what was then the Bela Vista Hotel,” Jackson recalls. “To arrive in Macau, walk across a little square and smell coffee made me think, Thank God for this!”
She liked Macau so much she began visiting more often and started making friends. Leaving a position as Lifestyle Editor for the Hong Kong Tattler, the food and wine expert began freelancing, contributing frequently to the South China Morning Post, and started to get commissions for pieces about Macau. “I had met one Macanese lady in particular, who I became quite good friends with,” Jackson remembers, “and it so impressed and fascinated me, this idea of possibly the world’s first fusion cuisine.”
On what became her monthly visits to Macau, Jackson met a few more Macanese people and began to feel integrated in the society. “It really got into my soul, I suppose,” she says. Having now researched the city’s culture extensively, she attributes much of that attraction to Macau’s unique heritage. “We know that when the Portuguese arrived in Macau there was almost no one here, just a few fishing families. The Portuguese, together with their Goan and Malaccan wives, cooks and slaves, just started to meld this place together. That makes it a completely unique place in Asia; it’s just this incredible mix. And 450 years is really a long time.” She professes a greater fascination with Macau than with her adopted home, though she does love Hong Kong. “Macau has so much to offer, historically and sociologically.”
In addition to her writing about Macau as a journalist, this fascination led to Jackson’s authoring three books on Macau: Macau on a Plate (1994), Hong Kong, Macau and the Muddy Pearl (1999) and Taste of Macau: Portuguese Cuisine on the China Coast (2003). She also collaborated with Francisco Caldeira Cabral and Leong Ka Tai on Macau’s Gardens and Landscape Art (2000).
An author enamoured
"Macau on a Plate is about food and culture, which is my passion,” Jackson says. “Of course I can write cookbooks, but what I really like is the why and where and how. This book actually looks at Portuguese, Macanese and Cantonese and is quite loving about all of them.” Though she knows many other authors feel embarrassed by their first book, Jackson remains proud of her freshman effort. “It’s a very sweet book, commissioned on the back of lots of journalism about Macau, and it’s still about the only book of its kind.”
Her next venture was indeed a Macanese cookbook, but that endeavour proved much less easy than one might imagine. “I started Taste of Macau in 1997, and it wasn’t until 2003 that I published it,” Jackson recalls. The delay came not from problems finding a publisher, but rather from the delicate task of getting Macanese chefs to part with their culinary secrets.
“I could understand their not wanting to give up their recipes,” she says. “Pre-99 there was not quite a panic but certainly a feeling of unease. As a Macanese girlfriend explained to me, touching her heart, ‘The only part of our culture we have left is our food.’ I often asked this woman for recipes. She said she would love to share them, but her father was deliberately keeping them from her thinking she would give them to me.”
Despite the difficulties, Jackson only felt more and more intrigued. The cookbook Taste of Macau was finally published in 2003 by Hong Kong University. “Cuisine has rarely been taken seriously as something to be studied in university,
either as a way into culture or even in its own right, so the fact that a university published a cookbook I just think is really cool,” Jackson beams. “I really like the content. Every recipe has a little or even a big mention about where it came from and why, and I include interviews with Macanese people about their food memories.” Respected Hong Kong poet P. K. Leung honoured Jackson with a poem to preface the book.
Jackson’s plans for the future include a book on the Burmese kitchen. “I like doing niche books,” she says, “and it pushes me to learn a new cuisine.” Though she has Burmese friends in Macau and Hong Kong, she is still searching for “an incredibly enthusiastic home cook to work with to actually get the body of recipes done.” She intends to donate ten dollars of the cover price to the flood victims of Myanmar. “Myanmar is overlooked anyway,” she says, “but after the earthquake in Sichuan, the disaster was forgotten in a matter of days.”
Going strong
Looking back on her near twenty-year love affair with Macau, which witnessed both the city’s transfer of sovereignty and its more recent development boom, Annabel Jackson has been, on one hand, pleased to see that Macanese traditions are surviving. “There was a huge concern pre-99 that Macanese culture and cuisine would disappear, but in fact this culture and its people are being supported,” she says.
Jackson, who currently teaches Wine Studies once a week in Macau at the Institute for Tourism Studies (IFT) and lectures on Cultural Tourism and Cuisine at the Institute of European Studies of Macau, gave an extensive presentation on Macanese food at an international symposium on food and foodways, held just two years ago at IFT.
“We’ve seen support and promotion from tourism, new Macanese restaurants opening and more and more Macanese actually being empowered,” Jackson notes. In fact, she has talked with members of the recent Macanese diaspora, in Portugal and even Hong Kong, who now regret having left and are thinking of moving back. “No one imagined that Macanese culture would become almost like a UNESCO World Heritage zone.
“And it’s not only the food; the Patuá drama group continues putting on their shows. The Macanese have been allowed to keep their sense of Macanese-ness, and, of course, we have to argue that they’re the indigenous people of Macau. That’s very strong, and it seems to me it’s staying strong.”
On the other hand, despite her love and passion for Macau, Jackson has grown upset with the city’s trajectory in the last two years. “I moved to Hong Kong in 89, took an apartment here in 95 and then a lovely little second home in Coloane Village, my little pied-à-terre,” Jackson reminisces, “but I used to give weekend culinary tours and day tours, and now I’ve stopped.” She cites the explosive development of the gaming industry, particularly on the Cotai Strip, as a serious deterrent to the “bona fide tourism” Macau once enjoyed.
Another Estoril?
“I recently recommended the UNESCO Heritage Trail to an elderly British couple,” she recalls. “When then they asked about other destinations I said, You should really go to Coloane village, but close your eyes on the way. These days, with the Cotai strip, I just don’t want to go to Coloane anymore.”
Jackson laments that even Hong Kongers like herself are no longer heading to Macau for a proper weekend. “The only people still coming are the golfers. I have friends who are members of the golf club and live in Ocean Gardens on the weekend, but they only eat in the golf club and then go home.”
Jackson sees an urgent need to get the real tourists back. “If we’re in a slight potential crisis, Macau has to go one of two ways, doesn’t it?” In her lectures in Cultural Tourism at the IEEM, Jackson presents a case study of a place struggling with how to manage its tourism. When she started teaching there about four years ago, she would use the resort town of Estoril, in Portugal, as an example. “They used to have UNESCO status and then lost it because they messed it up,” she says. “In the last two years, however, I’ve been using Macau as the case study, because the issue in Macau used to be how to give it some oomph, culturally, and now it’s how to even accommodate any cultural tourism at all.”
Nevertheless, Jackson sees the richness in the region and insists the old Macau does still exist. “If you know where you want to go – and if you can find a taxi to get there – and you wander around, you see the old granny with the little three-year-old coming back from the market. You see normal, loving family life. You see Portuguese and Macanese and Chinese, and it’s all in a lovely jumble still.” She confesses, “Secretly I still do love this place, but I’m very careful about where I go.”
As to how the future will affect Macanese cuisine, Jackson’s outlook remains guarded. “What we’re seeing in the big casino hotels now is everything but local food,” she laments. “The most common visitor to Macau these days is the gambler or possibly the convention-goer. If they stay in the Venetian, what’s the point of getting in a taxi and going 15 minutes to a little mom and pop shop to have some Macanese food when you can have Italian and Brazilian and American right there?”
A prettier plate
Jackson cites a problem of food presentation, as well. “Cuisines born in the kitchen do not translate very well into restaurant food. Often, Macanese food just doesn’t look good.” Though she knows there is currently a backlash against fancy restaurants, with many people returning to food that is pure and very true to its roots, she believes they still expect a decent kind of plate and a decent kind of table. “I think some of our restaurants in Macau suffer a bit for that,” she says. “People always ask me where to go for Macanese food, and I recommend them a place, but with a warning: it really is Formica tables and it really is self serve and you really will get a dollop on your plate. Real food lovers absolutely go for it, but for other people it’s a bit shocking.”
For her last book on Macau, Jackson borrowed tableware from a hotel supplier and had the dishes photographed at her house. “Just putting it on a gorgeous plate and not smeared all over the place really made it,” she says. “People look at those photographs and sigh, ‘Oh, I want to eat it now!’ Just a little bit of food styling was actually quite transforming, and I think it’s required.”
Of course, during her research Jackson came face to face with the famous rivalry among Macanese cooks. “I don’t think it’s a problem that every family thinks their crab curry is the best. It’s the same everywhere. Italy is a great example, where everyone thinks they make the best Papardelle with Whatever. The difference should be embraced. It’s not about who makes the best. They are absolutely fabulous dishes, and there are many different ways to make them.”
In both the passionate cook and the food lover, Annabel Jackson sees hope for the future. “There are still, clearly, people around – like the people I interviewed for that book – who look at food in a completely different way. It’s not just about eating. It’s absolutely an important part of their soul and their culture, and it’s critical to them in terms of identity.”