A Glutton’s Trip Part I: Penang, The Food Paradise.

I didn’t quite mean to completely disappear the last couple weeks but over the last week, I’ve been on a glorious two-leg holiday to Penang and Melbourne.

Since I have just about a million photos, I figure I would cover them in a couple of posts over the next few weeks starting with Penang, the glorious food paradise.

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Now if there’s one thing to be said about Penang, it’s that the food there is just incredible. I mean really, whoever first described Singapore as a food paradise has never been to Penang. With completely no disrepect to my local Singapore cuisine, Penang is the food paradise.

Since I have a ton of photos to get through, enough with the talking and on with the photos shall we?

Straight out of the airport, our first stop was in search of some good food. And starting the trip on the right note, plenty of good food we did find.

Macalister Street food court

The food courts in Penang are essentially what we call hawker centres in Singapore; a cluster of independently owned food stalls selling dishes from an array of cuisines. The food’s cheap and (usually) good, you sit anywhere you can find an available seat and the food gets delivered right to your table.

Chee cheong fun

In our typical fashion, we of course ordered everything in sight and then proceeded to polish it all off, bearing in mind we had already been fed on the plane.

The chee cheong fun (steamed barbequed pork and prawns rice noodles rolls) came served in a really sweet soy sauce and fried shallots mixture. It was a little weird for me to have sweetened chee cheong fun, something I’ve always had and enjoyed as a strictly savoury dish. Having said that though, the rice noodles itself- incredibly soft and silky- was probably texturally the best I’ve ever had.

Pork porridge

Kway teow (rice noodles) soup

Now the pork porridge and kway teow soup, those I really loved. The porridge was really tasty and while thickened, still had texture unlike most porridges that are boiled so long the rice grains completely disintegrates into the porridge.

And the kway teow soup, oh it was so good! It was soft as silk and so damned tasty. Even the beef balls and pork slices were incredibly tender and unlike anything I’ve ever had in Singapore. I don’t know how they do it but I’ll be more than happy to just keep doing the eating.

Sisters Char Kway Teow

One of my favourite places we ate at was coincidentally also along Macalister Road, a little eatery housing the famed Sisters char kway teow.

The place was fully packed both times we were there and we waited at least half an hour for the char kway teow to be served. So it was a really good thing that there were plenty of other really tasty dishes to get started on while waiting.

Yam cake

Otah

And boy, the food was so good I wished I had a second stomach for the day. I have had probably a million yam cakes and otahs in my life and none could hold a candle to the ones I had here. Incredibly fragrant and soooo so soft, they were all too easy to scoff down.

Hae mee (Prawn noodles)

Char kway teow

But the highlights for lunch for me really were the hae mee (prawn noodles) and char kway teow. I’m not a big fan of the char kway teow you can find at practically every hawker centre in Singapore with the sweet thick black sauce it’s cooked in. But the one I had in Penang was right up my alley. Deeply savoury with a slightly salty undertone and none of that sweet sauce nonsense, it was right out of this world. And the hae mee, oh don’t even get me started on the hae mee. The stock was incredibly sweet and served with a generous amount of bee hoon, bean sprouts and prawns, it was everything every bowl of hae mee should aspire to be.

Of course, savoury food was not the only order of the trip. The desserts we had were quite something to shout about as well.

Tau hway (beancurd with soya bean milk)

Given my love for tau hway, I couldn’t go past the stall at a food court we were at one night without ordering one. As it turns out, that stall sold the best tau hway I had ever had. The beancurd was so silky and smooth it literally glided down my throat. If I could only eat one thing the rest of my life, this would be a really strong contender (up against chocolate and peanut butter of course).

Chendol

Ice kachang

I’m usually not a fan of chendol (too much coconut milk and way too sweet) and ice kachang (too much ingredients and funny flavouring when all I really want is the shaved ice and palm sugar syrup). But these two particularly two desserts I had in Penang had me singing a completely different tune. The chendol was surprisingly good, served with a generous heap of grass jelly and kidney beans slightly undercooked such that they still had that perfect, slightly firm texture.

What really did it for me with the ice kachang was really the tiny scoop of peanut ice cream served on top. It was light, faintly tasted of coconut milk and had tons of chopped peanuts in it.

It was so good in fact I had to enquire if they would sell me just scoops of the ice cream. As it turns out, they did (I was barely the first person to request for it) so I was one happy customer.

Anyway, that pretty much it for me and my food photos in Penang (click here to see really random, non-food photos). Would I go back to Penang? I definitely would in a heartbeat, if not only for a plate of that char kway teow and bowl of tau hway.

Until then, I guess I’ll keep dreaming of the deliciousness that is Penang while looking for that perfect bowl of tau hway on this side of the Causeway.