Military Club celebrates 147 years

The Macau Military Club is celebrating its 147th anniversary, coinciding with the 19th edition of the Portugal Food and Wine Festival.

The pastel pink building, located on Avenida da Praia Grande, was originally constructed in 1870 as a private military club. Designed in Portuguese neo-classical style, like many other structures around Senado Square and Tap Seac Square, the building’s façade features Chinese and Western decorations.

As part of the celebrations, the Club is organizing the Portugal Food and Wine Festival – Spring 2017, which is now in its 19th edition, having first been held in December 1999.

This year, the Festival will be held until June 19 and will be marked by the presence of two prestigious chefs from Portugal, José Júlio Vintem and Catarina Ponce Álvares, according to a statement released by the organization. 

As traditional during the Festival, a buffet of more than 60 different Portuguese wines – including whites, reds, rosés, muscats, and ports – will be served, as well as snacks prepared under the chefs’ supervision.

According to organizers of the Festival, the event “is an important initiative of the Club that meets the objectives of providing specialized training of Portuguese gastronomy to the Club’s restaurant staff.”

Also as in previous anniversary celebrations, this year’s commemoration featured last week the opening of an art exhibition. The exhibition, simply titled “Portuguese Painting Exhibition”, runs until June 24 and features selected works by Alfredo Luz, Cruzeiro Seixas and João Paulo.

Both the exhibition and the Festival will be featured as part of the “Month of Portugal” program. The program, designed by several Portuguese-led institutions in the MSAR, was inaugurated last year with the aim of strengthening Portugal’s cultural presence in Macau.

After decades of struggling financially, the Macau Military Club was finally restored in 1995 and reopened as a restaurant and bar, which today hosts regular events and exhibitions.

With “the sponsorship and support of Chinese civil society, the Club was able to re-found itself,” Manuel Geraldes of the Macau Military Club told Jornal Tribuna de Macau this week. “It has been maintained with plenty of energy and activity, being today an important place in terms of culture, meeting, and gastronomic offerings. It is without a doubt a place of reference in the MSAR.”

According to a wall plaque at the Club, the financial contributors to the 1995 refurbishment included casino magnate Stanley Ho, former chief executive Edmund Ho, patriotic Chinese entrepreneur Ma Man Kei and Ng Lap Seng, who is currently standing trial in New York over allegedly bribing United Nations officials.

The Club was founded in 1870 during the tenure of António Sérgio de Sousa as the Portuguese Governor of Macau. Sousa was the immediate predecessor to the more famous Januário Correia de Almeida, who served as the local governor between 1872 and 1874, and is remembered, according to some, for defending the city of Macau from an invasion of Chinese pirates.