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
Fried Oyster by Anjung Gurney Stall 84
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.
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.
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.
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 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!