Taste the Rare Beauty of Macanese Cuisine with This Beef and Pork Minchi

Macau is a bona fide melting wok; its cuisine has felt the imprint of the likes of not only the Chinese and Portuguese who settled there from the 16th through 20th century, but also Indians, Goans, Malays, and Japanese. One of Macau's most popular dishes—minchi—is believed to have been introduced to the peninsula by the Anglophone community in Hong Kong, since it gets its name from the English word "minced."

That, or it comes from Goa. Nobody really knows. And frankly, who really cares? All that matters is that this minced-meat dish is damn delicious.

Everybody and their grandmother, and their grandmother's grandmother, have different recipes for minchi. But Abraham Conlon, owner of Chicago's Fat Rice, likes to use a mixture of minced pork and beef that's cooked in garlic, shallots, and spices, and covered in light and dark soy sauce and Worcester sauce, before being topped with a runny fried egg.

For Conlon his minchi is an attempt to preserve the unique cuisine that's mostly been passed on through oral history. For the rest of us, it's a rare chance to get a taste of Macanese food.