We were there for a quick meal this evening. It was the Chinese Eighth Lunar Month again - the Lantern Festival falls in Sep 17 (next Tuesday). It’s a 2,000-yar-old tradition which dates back to the reign of Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty, who ruled from 180-157 BC. As always, Tai Tong’s rafters are packed with hundreds of lanterns-for-sale, which make for a very eye-catching sight.
Sweet-and-sour pork - the version here has a much more complex combination of flavors, besides the tomato-sugar-vinegar mix one gets in most places. The chinkiang dark vinegar used has a more full-bodied and mellow, plum-like flavor.
Address
Tai Tong Restaurant
45, Lebuh Cintra (Cintra Street), 10100 George Town, Penang, Malaysia
Tel: +6016-774 6625
Opening hours: 6.30am to 1.30pm, 6pm to 9pm Tue to Sun. Closed on Mondays.
The first two pictures looked like a pretty hand-drawn sketch at first glance!
I had S&S pork in HK last week and was pleasantly surprised at the balance vs what I’ve eaten before (actually it was almost identical to the version I grew up with in Mumbai).
But no chinkiang vinegar in that (nor was it offered at DTF with xlb – they had a beige vinegar that looked like cider or malt vinegar).
(I remarked to my HK friends that the similarity of what we grew up with in Mumbai must be indicative of Hakka origin or popularity, because the short-lived lovely Hakka restaurant in nyc featured the dish served over ice, so the “candied” coating stayed crunchy.)
I remembered that the Hakkas had a strong presence in Kolkata in the old days - I visited a couple of restaurants there, back in the late-2000s, very interesting dishes, especially the “Hakka noodles”.
Coincidentally, I just wrote about Hakka “thunder tea rice” recently:
