“I remember walking down Oxford Street with Andrew in 1988, we passed a bakery and he pointed and said ‘That’s what I’m going to make in my bakery,” said Eileen. The result was a Portuguese-English hybrid – with a custard that’s more like the English version, and a light, flaky shell and caramelised top that stays true to the Portuguese pastel de nata – thought by historians to be invented by the 18th-century monks of the Jeronimos Monastery in Lisbon’s Belém parish. ![]() He also chose to mould the tart’s shells by hand – a divergence from the dense English shell that’s pounded into shape. Not content with the Hyatt’s traditional tart, which had a jelly-like consistency, Stow tinkered with the recipe, jettisoning corn flour in the spirit of the creamier British custard tarts. “They were a version of the pastel de Belem of Lisbon – an egg tart with a much paler filling which included corn flour.”Ĭhef Raimund Pichlmaier, who worked at the Hyatt Regency and had been a client of Stow’s import business, introduced the Englishman to the pastel de nata recipe and gave him a dozen heavy-duty tart tins to get going. The Hyatt Regency (now the Regency Hotel Macau) was also experimenting with egg custard tarts on the buffet line from time to time, "but these were different,” Thomas said. “, the only custard tart on sale in cake shops was one with a short crust which was an import from Hong Kong, influenced by the British custard tart,” said Liz Thomas, a longtime Macau resident and former event planner and travel operator. Until then, very little European food culture had influenced the region. ![]() “In the ‘80s, a lot of Portuguese came to Macau and started their own businesses because the country was seeing an economic boom,” explained Jason Wordie, local historian and author of the book Macao – People and Places, Past and Present. When he then decided to start a bakery, he just happened to open shop at the right time. ![]() First he was an industrial pharmacist, and then he opened up an ingredient import business, which eventually failed. Stow opened the now famous Lord Stow’s Bakery in Coloane’s central square in 1989 – but he hadn’t moved to Macau to be a baker.
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