Hong Kong bakery beats Macao in Bloomberg’s Portuguese-style egg tart list

Hong Kong’s Bakehouse topped a new Bloomberg blind taste test of eight Portuguese-style egg tarts, scoring 8 out of 10, ahead of Lisbon’s Manteigaria (7.5) and Macao’s Lord Stow’s Bakery (安德魯餅店, 7.35), the birthplace of the iconic Macanese egg tart.

Which Portuguese-style egg tarts did Bloomberg recognise?

Other stores featured on the ranking published in the Hong Kong edition of Bloomberg’s weekly newsletter on 17 September 2026 included Hong Kong bakery chain Hashtag B (6.6), Macao-based Margaret’s Café e Nata (瑪嘉烈蛋撻店, 6.2), Macao brand Bamu (八目烘焙, 6.1), US fast food chain KFC (5.65) and London’s Santa Nata (5.1).

What did Bloomberg say about the top three egg tarts? 

On Bakehouse, Bloomberg writer Tara Mulholland said the store’s Portuguese-style egg tarts managed to earn first place, despite being produced in large numbers – around 30,000 per day. 

The writer described Bakehouse’s egg tarts as having a “deep, slightly roasted flavor and firmness,” with “its teacup-like shell encasing a distinctive crème brûlée filling.”

Runner-up Manteigaria was praised for its egg tarts’ thin, flaky crust, cinnamon notes and the balance between these two elements. 

Meanwhile, Lord Stow’s egg tarts impressed the judges with their filling, which had a “balanced buttery egginess.” However, Bloomberg noted that some of the assessors were not entirely sold on the bakery’s traditional flavours and were instead searching “for variations on the form.”

What other food rankings has Bloomberg done?

In 2025, Bloomberg conducted a similar ranking involving Hong Kong’s mooncakes. Unlike the egg tart list, the mooncake edition was evaluated exclusively by master chef of the Imperial Patisserie bakery chain, Yip Wing Wah, through blind testing. 

Yip ranked Langham’s mooncake in first place (8.0), followed by Imperial Patisserie (7.0), Ritz-Carlton (6.5), Shangri-La (6.0), Grand Hyatt (5.5), Four Seasons (5.0), Mandarin Oriental (4.5), Peninsula (4.0) and Four Seasons Lung King Heen (2.0).

What other Hong Kong and Macao food items have been compared?

Egg tarts are not the only food items to have stirred rivalry between the Greater Bay Area (GBA) cities of Hong Kong and Macao. 

In May 2026, Hong Kong lawmaker Adrian Ho King-hong – the nephew of former Macao Chief Executive Edmund Ho – sparked a war of words when he remarked that Macao’s food offerings were “extremely ordinary” during a legislative session on promoting culinary tourism. 

[See more: Macao fires back after Hong Kong lawmaker calls its food ‘extremely ordinary’]

“I dare say that Hong Kong’s pork chop buns are better than Macao’s. I’m telling you!” Ho said, according to a report by Macau Daily Times. 

The lawmaker’s remarks resulted in pushback from Macao, where former Macao lawmaker Sulu Sou responded by launching a social media competition to vote for Macao’s best pork chop bun. 

Ho, however, doubled down on his views, following up on his original comments by purchasing 100 Hong Kong pork chop buns for lawmakers and journalists during a session at the Legislative Council on 13 May 2026.