[Penang, Malaysia] Modern-Penang cuisine by ๐—–๐—ผ๐—บ๐—บ๐˜‚๐—ป๐—ฎ๐—น ๐—ง๐—ฎ๐—ฏ๐—น๐—ฒ ๐—ฏ๐˜† ๐—š๐—ฒ๐—ป (ๆ น)

Slipping into Communal Table by Gen is like stepping into the future through a time portal: one emerges into a cool, stark , almost antiseptic dining space, away from the din and hustle & bustle of the hawker food scene just outside its glass walls. This little eatery on the corner of the busy McNair Road and Presgrave Street intersection is located right smack in the middle of George Townโ€™s formerly notorious โ€œChit Tiau Lorโ€ (Seven-Street Precinct), a rough, working-class neighbourhood controlled by Chinese triad gangs. In the old days, perhaps as recent as the 1970s, disagreements and rivalries were often settled by swords and knives here.

These days, The Seven-Street Precinct is undergoing a slow, but sure, process of gentrification, with trendy cafes and B&Bs popping up here and there. The only knives one sees here nowadays are in places like Genโ€™s open kitchen, where a nifty, young kitchen crew worked efficiently, silently turning out pretty plates of wonderful tasting creations for its audience: basically 10 diners (at full capacity) seated at a long table that ran almost the length of the restaurant. Everyone gets a front row view of the goings-on in the kitchen. Which also means - the kitchen crew has to move with a well-rehearsed, almost balletic grace & sureness: not a drop of sauce carelessly spilt on the counter, no accidental bump between kitchen crew members and, god forbid, no crashing utensil onto the floor.
The silence is golden here - one donโ€™t see a ranting chef de cuisine amidst the Zen-like calm in here.

We started off with a couple of pineapple and lime-flavoured kefir drinks sourced from Pharm Hut. These were refreshing and had a delayed alcohol kick.

Our dinner consisted of:

  1. Mandai (cempedak skin) fritters, coated with kicap sambal and topped with finely-shaved cempedak seed - this is a more refined, upmarket take on the cempedak fritters one gets by the streets of George Town, albeit a savoury version. It was a textural delight.

  1. Rice crackers with โ€œkum heongโ€ mousse and clams, topped with finely-shredded crisped leeks - these were very pretty to look at and, again, had wonderful textures. The โ€œkum heongโ€ sauce lifts up the flavour profile by quite a few notches. This is real, contemporary-Asian cuisine made for modern Asians, not those pseudo-Oriental stuff one gets in over-hyped, overpriced trendy spots in Europe or America.

  1. Shredded black chicken, herbal tea egg, crisped enoki mushrooms, with herbal soup - my favourite dish for the evening was actually this soup course. It exuded all the warmth and comfort of a homemade broth - deep, mellow flavours, the shredded black chicken meat added just the right body to the dish. The perfectly coddled tea egg, with molten yolk, was to-die for.

  1. Watermelon, with ginger flower sorbet and galangal chili - I rather liked this dish: itโ€™s bold, itโ€™s flavoursome, and its taste profile screams Penang-Nyonya. And yet, it looked almost too futuristic, like something which we donโ€™t expect to be created yet, but transported back to us by a time-machine, like a Nyonya dish from the 22nd-century sort of stuff. The sharp, cold watermelon cubes, flavoured by the sorbet, beautifully scented by the galangal and ginger flower (โ€œbunga kantanโ€) made one reminisce about Penangโ€™s Nyonya โ€œasam pedasโ€.

  1. Serving out the crispy-skinned roast pork, pickled onion and daikon, with assorted leaf wraps and green chili salsa - this substantial main course was more-ish, and packed with all the traditional Chinese roast pork flavours. Served with fresh leafy vegetables, it (again) takes a leaf out of Penang-Nyonya cuisineโ€™s style of combining savoury filling with fresh, crisp green leaf wraps, e.g. for its โ€œjiu hu charโ€ classic.

  1. Tamarind-glazed skate topped with chopped scallions - this was really good: a generous skate wing, yielding more meat than weโ€™d expected, blanketed by a very sticky-delicious, sour-sweet tamarind glaze. Iโ€™d be contented to be here just for this dish.

Desserts:
7) White glutinous rice ice-cream and lime curd - I was more intrigued by the white glutinous rice ice-cream, which had a rich consistency but none of the sticky rice grainy texture I was expecting. Perhaps needed a little tweak to get this right.
The lime curd part was nice - the sour pinch giving my palate a jolt.

  1. Red date cakes - these were served warm, fluffy and sweet. We were actually advised by our waitress to dip the warm cakes into the cold ice-cream/curd for a yin-yang, warm-vs-cold taste sensation, but I rather enjoyed the cakes on their own.

  2. Durian cream puff - durian is in season in Penang right now, albeit at the tail-end (the annual season lasts from end-May to end-July). The cream provided a gentle hint of the durian. Being a durian fiend, Iโ€™d selfishly hoped for a more assertive, durian-heavy scent, like the durian ice-cream I had recently at Lโ€™Unico Gelateria in Kuala Lumpur.

  3. Cempedak macaron - I enjoyed this much more, despite the subtler-than-Iโ€™d-expected flavours of the cempedak, which is also in season at the moment.

A good meal. I like the concept which owner-chef Johnson Wong espoused. Heโ€™s still experimenting with new flavour profiles and digging deeper into Malaysiaโ€™s culinary roots which, come to think of it, was his reason all along for naming this restaurant โ€œGenโ€ (ๆ น) which, in Chinese, meant โ€œRootsโ€. Really looking forward what else this young enfant terrible of Penangโ€™s modern culinary scene can conjure up in future.

Address
Communal Table by Gen (ๆ น)
68a, Lebuh Presgrave (Presgrave Street)
10300 George Town, Penang, Malaysia
Tel: +6 012 578 3323
Opening hours: 6pm to 11pm, Tue to Sun. Closed on Mondays.
Also open for afternoon tea: 2pm to 5.30pm Fri, Sat & Sun.

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Beautiful. I like everything about this place.

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Peter - in my head, Iโ€™m eating there. I can feel the atmosphere of the place and I can feel the textures and flavours of the food (although there are things Iโ€™ve never eaten). And I just love it. For me, one of your most evocative reviews ever. Mega thanks.

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Thanks, John. Now if you ever do come this way, Iโ€™m going to bring you here to eat. :grin: :+1:

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Bravo!

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How are they doing, business-wise? Crowded?

This seems geared to well-heeled foreign/Chinese touristsโ€ฆwill they be able to pull through?

Quite a respectable crowd each evening. Their target market seemed to be the local Chinese crowd, although they seamlessly moved to speaking English, if need be.

Thatโ€™s great to hear.

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We were back at Communal Table by Genโ€™s yesterday, to try out their afternoon tea set. It was served upstairs from the main dining room, where they normally hold wine-tasting sessions.

The afternoon tea set came in a nifty 3-level serving cabinet, with each of the level/drawer containing some interesting comestibles:

The afternoon tea consisted of:
Steamed savoury egg custard (akin to chawan mushi) in herbal broth, and topped with sliced fresh mushrooms

Chicken curry pot pie - a very mild but flavoursome curry under light-as-air puff pastry.

Clockwise from top: radish cake with black onion sambal; sardine puff with potato & salted egg-yolk; Vietnamese summer roll (gแปi cuแป‘n), and yam mochi bun - these were a collection of Asian snack-inspired canapes, all with distinctive (familiar) flavours.

Yam mochi bun

Durian cream-filled puff

Nangka macaron

"Horkasai" (coffee + Milo) crรจme brรปlรฉe

Very interesting combination of textures and flavours, Perlis-born chef Kevin Ng, heads the kitchen here at Communal Table by Gen, and works closely with Johnson Wong, the head chef who conceptualizes much of the dishes here and is the driving force behind Communal Table by Gen, and its older sibling, Gen, over at Prestige Hotel on Church Street.

The seasonal offerings here meant constant introduction of new dishes, many of which are introduced here at the more casual Communal Table by Gen, before finding their way into the menu of the fine dining Gen.

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Fascinating stuff, Peter. It sort of follows the format of a traditional British afternoon tea, yet is entirely modern and Asian.

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Exactly! People here still equate afternoon tea with the trad-British one, so the introduction of any modern/Asian or fusion elements will be regarded as a โ€œvariationโ€ from the norm.

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Day 504 since Malaysia started its Movement Control Order (MCO) back in 18 March 2020, and 84 days since the current phase, MCO 3.0, made it impossible for us to eat out. Itโ€™s been too long, but we just have to make do with what we have.

Ordered afternoon tea take-out from ๐‚๐จ๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ง๐š๐ฅ ๐“๐š๐›๐ฅ๐ž ๐›๐ฒ ๐ ฤ“๐ง ๆ น, today. The set for two was delivered in a nifty ribbon-tied gift box, and consisted of a selection of savory and sweet treats, plus a packet of Earl Grey tea, to be brewed oneself (oh well).

Quite a nice selection - looked pretty substantial, too, once we lifted the cover of the box. As it was a take-out, home-delivered, Gen could not provide its more delicate and complicated creations.
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The afternoon tea spread consisted of:

Mille feuille, layered with orange-lemongrass crรจme:

Chouquette, with lychee-Jiu Niang (sweet fermented rice) crรจme filling:
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Macarons, with Oolong tea-chocolate centres:

Brioche, served with durian kaya and whipped coconut cream:

Potato roesti, topped with fermented cabbage:

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Tiger prawn mini-burgers, with relish & tomato puree:

Clockwise:
(1) Pie tee โ€œsumbatโ€, with black onion sambal & tofu;
(2) Chicken lollipops, marinated in belacan and curry;
(3) Duck-meat & mustard croquettes

The duck croquettes:

Cheesecake, layered with mango puree and pomelo:
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The take-out items werenโ€™t much to look at but, taste-wise, sure packed some flavor punches, and are tastier than afternoon tea spread we get from other places around George Town.

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I think that even looks pretty in the box. So envious, you can get home delivery of that quality

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Oh yes, itโ€™s quite competitive nowadays for these businesses to stay alive amidst the pandemic lockdown. Gen levied a nominal MYR10 (ยฃ1.70) charge for home delivery, as my place is only about 10 km from their restaurant, but many other restaurants actually deliver for free!

That looks so wonderful. Iโ€™m jealous!

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