"I would like to have one mango ice cream ball please."

"Sorry, the ice cream in our store is calculated in pounds and they are in a shape of brick," answered the sales clerk in the store. This was a big joke I made when I first came to Lai Kei Ice Cream.

Lai Kei Ice Cream is the oldest ice cream store in Macao with 60 years of history. The store we see today has already passed through three generations from its beginning. Although time has passed, its owners insisted on retaining the immemorial flavor and decoration. When I first came into the store, I was surprised by the retrospective decoration and the unadorned stuff they owned. Everything in Lai Kei such as a cup, or a dish is in the oldest pattern that we may not find nowadays. The ice cream brick, adzuki beans ice and ice cream sandwich are the most famous items in Lai Kei. They use the traditional method to make the ice cream in order to retain the original taste of the ice cream.

My childhood memory casts back while staying for hours at the corner of Lai Kei. I remember my childhood time in Fujian, my grandmother always brought me and my cousin to buy a kind of ice cream which was in the shape of football. Every time we were very keen to go out with grandma during the weekend because it was ensured that we would pass by that store and be given a football ice-cream by grandma. Although I could hardly remember the decoration and even the exact items in that store, I could still remember the taste of that ice cream. In my deep memory, that ice cream is the sweetest dessert that I have had. The plain and original ice cream in Lai Kei brought back the memory of the sweet taste indeed.

Nowadays, there are various kinds of attractive and delicious ice cream products on the market, but Lai Kei has not disappeared even though it stands at the flourishing Avenida do Conselheiro Ferreira de Almeida. It is because it does not follow the trend, but insists on keeping the initial taste and packaging.

One of my Hong Kong friends, Bryan, is addicted to Lai Kei's dessert. He insists on visiting Lai Kei every time he comes to Macao. He told me that the reason that he appreciates Lai Kei so much is the friendliness it offers. "This is the warmest restaurant I have ever been to. Although the package is not colorful and attractive enough, and the ice cream is not the most soft and tasty among other ice cream stores in Hong Kong, I enjoy the moment staying at Lai Kei. This is the taste that I cannot find in any stores in the flourishing city, but I've found it in Lai Kei."