Egg Tarts: Hong Kong Style vs Macau Portuguese Tarts

The Cantonese egg tart, daan taat (蛋撻), is a small round pastry filled with egg custard and baked until the filling barely trembles. It is sweet but restrained, with a buttery shell that may be crumbly or flaky depending on the baker. Two styles dominate today: the Hong Kong tart, with its smooth, glossy yellow surface, and the Macau Portuguese-style tart, richer and caramelised in dark spots on top. Both are loved, and both have a place in dim sum.

A Western tart, a Cantonese life

Custard tarts were familiar in British and European baking long before they reached southern China. The commonly told story is that, in the early twentieth century, Western-style bakeries and department-store restaurants in Guangzhou began offering egg tarts as a novelty, and the idea moved to Hong Kong, then a British colony with its own appetite for Western pastries.

By the 1950s and 1960s, the egg tart had become thoroughly local. It was sold in Hong Kong bakeries and cha chaan teng, the city's casual tea cafés, alongside milk tea and pineapple buns, and found its way onto dim sum menus. Precise dates and "first" bakeries are debated, so it is fairest to say the Hong Kong egg tart was taking shape between the 1920s and the 1960s.

The Hong Kong style

A Hong Kong egg tart is all about the custard: eggs, sugar and milk or evaporated milk, strained until silky and baked gently so the top stays smooth, bright and unbrowned. The shells come in two kinds.

• Shortcrust (牛油皮) is buttery and crumbly, a little like a biscuit. It is the style many Hong Kong bakeries are known for.
• Flaky pastry (酥皮) is built from many layers of dough and fat, so it shatters into delicate flakes. It is the style most associated with dim sum restaurants.

The ideal custard wobbles slightly when the plate is moved and tastes of egg rather than sugar.

The Macau Portuguese-style tart

Macau, a Portuguese territory until 1999, has its own story. The Portuguese pastel de nata, from Lisbon, has a flaky shell and a custard often enriched with cream, baked in a very hot oven until it blisters. In 1989 the English baker Andrew Stow opened a bakery in Coloane, Macau, and developed his own version inspired by the Portuguese tart and the English custard tarts he knew. It became widely popular, and Portuguese-style egg tarts spread through Hong Kong, mainland China and beyond in the 1990s.

So the "Portuguese egg tart" sold in Asia is related to the Lisbon original but not identical to it. Its custard is usually richer and softer than the Hong Kong type, and its caramelised top gives a faintly bitter, crème-brûlée note.

How to enjoy them

• Ask when they come out. Many restaurants bake egg tarts in batches; a warm one is worth waiting a few minutes for.
• Hold it by the shell. Flaky pastry is fragile; a small plate underneath catches the crumbs.
• Treat it as dessert, or not. At dim sum there is no fixed order, and many families order egg tarts alongside savoury dishes.

Egg tarts at Neptune Palace

Our Freshly Baked Egg Tarts (鬆化雞蛋撻, menu 907) are on the dim sum dessert list at both Neptune Palace locations, in Vancouver at Marine Gateway and in Burnaby at The Amazing Brentwood. The Chinese name, sung fa (鬆化), describes a light, flaky shell. Like all our dim sum, they are made in-house.

They make a natural finish to a dim sum meal, perhaps with a fresh pot of tea. Dim sum is served every day until 3pm; for weekend tables, calling ahead is recommended.

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