fried tofu

Among their tofu dishes in the menu, this is their signature dish. Fried tofu with some plum sauce topping and a splash of fragrant sesame. Kind of simple but taste good.

seafood tomyam

The portion for Seafood tomyam was also okay and the bowl looked as if it was filled up with lots of ingredients. The soup itself was reddish (rem the real Tomyam soup is clear one?) but quite spicy and sour, at least we did agree the soup tasted good.
Overall, RM78 for 6 persons (RM13 per pax + RM0.30 for water) is quite reasonable and does not burn hole to your pocket. It is in air-conditioned environment too so you don’t need to worry about sweating after having tomyam soup, like me :P.
One thing to watch out is we did notice a 10% service charge for the set lunch (it’s on the menu) but we were charged at nett rate instead. So it is advisable for you to check with the waiter/ owner upfront before ordering.

curry mee

Overall, the taste of the curry mee is great. The food is worth the money and the owners are friendly. However, there are not many sitting places and is hard to find a parking slot nearby. If you parked nearby to the market all the illegal parking attendants will collect money from you.

siu long bao

Not Dragon-i in Queensbay Mall. It's outside the shop lot there at Queensbay. The shop name is call House of Dumpling. Siu Long Bao is a kind of dumpling that is origin from Shanghai, China. There is soup (some say juices) in it with meat. You bite a little of the top and then you like suck out the soup or, tear into half on a spoon and you drink it.

lok lok

As usual, we were browsing and hunting through for a nice dinner, and somehow Hubby had a great idea of having some Lok Lok! Commonly on the island, we usually go to Padang Brown or the Pulau Tikus Market at night, however this time; hubby wants to try out the Lok Lok at Butterworth’s Chai Leng Park, Wai Sek Kai.
We made a trip over there and we chose New Corner Lok Lok as it is the first visible stall when you enter into this one way street. In the evening, this street is turned into a hawker food haven with stalls lining up from the beginning right till the end.

beef ball soup

Beef Ball Soup at Lorong Baru
The 'lucky' 8 comprise of mostly the usual suspects: Audrey, Ai Ling, Dennis, Henry, Kam Keong, Wen Chieh, Valerie and myself. Kam Keong is new, or rather new to the group. He is actually my senior from my university days joining us to perhaps take a break from the mundane monotony of daily (domesticated) life ;). We also had a 'penumpang', Selina, whose hometown is in Penang and hearing that we are making a trip there, chose to hitch a ride in our cars.
The journey was supposed to start at 5:30am, after all participants gathered at the Trail Tracker's HQ. However we were somewhat delayed because someone forgot to set the alarm to wake up on time. :) But to that person's credit, a phone call was all it takes before that person rushed over to the meeting place so that the we all can commence the trip at 6:30am.

fried oyster

Fried Oyster by Anjung Gurney Stall 84
Ordered to taste, the fried oyster are similar to Malacan style fried oyster. Fried oyster, known as O-jien in Hokkien (the most used dialect in Penang) served by Stall 84 are delicious. It's fragantly fried with well proportioned of starch and egg mixture and generous portion of oyster.

chicken wings

Yummy Barbequed Chicken Wings and also Chicken Butts!Mmmmm...These were perfectly barbequed, smokey and slightly crisp on the outside while still tender and juicy on the inside...(They were a tad too oily though... but not that bad)

laksa

Penang has Malaysia's best food. A pronounced Chinese influence (much of the population has family roots in Hokkien and Teochew provinces) is blended with indigenous Malay and south Indian spicing (the Indians came on British opium ships to become plantation workers) and Arab recipes and techniques. Put all this together and you have rather more than supermarket satay. Against local advice, I eschew taxis and, in suffocating heat and drenching humidity, I hit the streets to find the food: it's like walking in hot soup.
There are three types of hawker market in Penang: municipal, new development and private enterprise. Of the first, the most interesting I found was at the end of Persiaran Gurney, near the shiny unnecessariness of G Hotel. Gurney is like that - towering blocks and pricey malls - but this market is noisy, smelly and raucous: rough-and-ready-made food, if you like, and the hundred-odd stalls positively pullulate with life. Families shove and tourists are few; you choose and pay from whichever stall or stalls you fancy, squeeze on to a table and your dinner arrives.
This is just the place for your squid and convolvulus dinner, or a plate of koay teow th'ng, a noodle soup with fish balls, thickened with pig's blood, which you'll be eating in neon-washed semi-darkness, with baldly staring Malaysian grandmas and (bizarrely) banging acid house music for company.
The new development hawker markets I tried were a disappointment, as what you gain in hygiene you lose in atmosphere. New World, for example, has removed the private hawkers from Swatow Lane and put them in a place that mixes the aesthetic of Brent Cross in north London with that of a hospital waiting room. Still, they do have those nice turbo fans that mist you with cool water, and Celine Dion on the PA.
Much more fun was the Hong Kong Tea Garden, a fine example of a private hawker market, where stalls grow up around an existing restaurant. You can eat all day and most of the night here, either ordering from the restaurant proper, or from the stalls that surround it. As well as just about every food in the Malaysian culinary canon, HKTG is fine place to try teh tarik, "pulled tea".
This heady drink is a mixture of hot tea and condensed milk, poured from a great height, a technique that both cools the drink and gives it a frothy, cappuccino top. Teh tarik is also the dentist's friend, being both sweet as fudge and thick enough to coat your teeth for the rest of the day. My advice is to ask for a chilled jelly-nut, the young coconut whose water you sip through a straw before scraping out the soft white flesh inside

zhu zhang fen

Gurney Drive is popular with its hawkers affair and have recently become a phenomenon in Penang where visitors from KL and as far as Singapore flock down to Gurney Drive just to sample its delicate array of food. The number of people frequenting Gurney Drive hawker stalls on weekends is quite high compare to many years ago and it can be a daunting experience to visit the ever so famous Gurney Drive just to sample Penang’s delicacy as finding a place to sit can be as difficult as finding a parking space in Kuala Lumpur shopping malls during the weekend. Furthermore, the quality of the food has drastically deteriorate over the years.

kuih-muih

We keep saying nostalgic because that is how those roti bakar are prepared, under the charcoal fire. Yup, the roti bakar here has a more conventional, old style of toast, unlike the one at Sungai Tiram.
An oil drum was used with middle section cut to make holes that allow breads to be toasted directly under the charcoal while the top portion is used to boil the water. Occasionally, the charcoal ash may fall down but they will brush it off immediately.

tang shui

Tong Sui is a generic term used when referring to desserts consumed by the Chinese that is normally served at the end of the meal. Tong sui is popular among the Chinese or where the presence of Chinese people are obvious.
The phrase “tong sui” itself translates to “sugar water” which means the dessert is a type of sweet serving. It is also known as “tian tang” or sweet soup in Chinese which also reflects that the dessert is soup based.There are many types of tong sui available and the one we have here is known as “cheng pou leong” or “qing bu liang - 清补凉”.The popularity of “qing bu liang” picked in Malaysia quite a while ago, possibly due to the exposure from watching the Hong Kong drama and those exposed to Chinese cultures in other nations. In Penang, it is commonly known as “leng chee kang“.
There is not much cooking required to prepare “leng chee kang” as most of the ingredients are either cooked upfront or straight from the cans and into the bowls. The only item that must be cooked is the soup (or syrup) itself, which is typically mixture of sugar cooked with water.
The ingredients used usually consist of sweet potatoes, jelly, lychee, longan, sea coconut, atap chee, red beans, white fungus and perhaps much more. They are mixed into a bowl and poured with the syrup. “Leng chee kang” is normally served hot but ice cubes can be added if cold dessert is preferred.

wan tan mee

The first real meal I had upon arriving was this colorful wan tan mee, priced at $1 or forty plus pesos. This was egg noodles in black soya sauce with slices of roast pork, dumplings, green veggies, chilies and other bits. Simply superb!