It’s been a couple of years since I was back at Leong Yew - well, one whole year was wasted by the great COVID lockdown of 2020.
But it was the excited chatter by Penang foodies over the Web space about a new food find at Leong Yew which got me all curious again to go back. And that was the rare (for Penang) Teochew chwee kway. These steamed little rice flour pudding, topped with chopped & sauteed salted radish were common in Singapore, and also at Bangkok’s Teochew-dominated Chinatown in Samphaeng/Yaowarat.
So, off I went early this week back to Leong Yew and, lo & behold, the chwee kway stall was there, positioned prominently at the front of the kopitiam:
There has been a complete change of food vendors at Leong Yew: gone was the husband-and-wife couple who ran the anchor stall which offered Cantonese-style noodle stir-fries. In their place was another husband-and-wife couple, the Tans, who ran an impressive roast meats stall, and the said chwee kway stall.
For me, the chwee kway stall was a godsend. I’d missed these little salty-savoury puddings so much, since it’s virtually impossible for me to go back to Singapore for quite a while yet. Mrs Tan, the wife, did all the work for the chwee kway. Curiously, she herself was actually Cantonese (or Toishanese, to be exact), but she learnt everything she needed about this very Teochew snack from her Teochew mother-in-law.
The disc-shaped chwee kway here are thicker than those we get in Singapore and Bangkok, because Mrs Tan used deep metal bowls to steam her puddings, whereas chwee kway in Singapore & Thailand used shallow little porcelain saucers to make the puddings.
But taste-wise, these chwee kway were perfect - 100% the texture and the flavour of the best ones I get back in Singapore. Mrs Tan would unmould the little puddings on a plate, and spoon the deliciously savoury salted radish topping on top of each pudding. The topping had the perfect balance of flavours - so important, and which many places in Singapore failed to achieve.
Mr Tan Hak Soon, meanwhile, busied himself with the very popular Cantonese-style roast meats stall, and he certainly knew how to roast his meats - some of the best-tasting siew yoke (crisp/crackling-skinned roast pork-belly), char-siew (caramelised BBQ pork) and siew ngap (Cantonese-style roast duck).
One can opt to have the roast meats with steamed white rice, or with spinach-flavoured noodles:
The kopitiam, which used to be bustling during pre-COVID days, now has a languid feel as many Penangites still preferred to stay away from busy areas.
Definitely worth a trip here, not only for the chwee kway, but for the Cantonese roast meats which I must say are some of the best I’d found in George Town.
