This hawker stall on 361 Beach Street (near the intersection with Malay Street) serves up one of the best-tasting renditions of “sar hor fun” and “yee fu mee” I’d had for the long time. All the lard-laden traditional Penang flavours are there. Only opens in the evenings, with no fixed days off - definitely a keeper.
“Sar hor fun” - beautifully seared “hor fun” and “mai fun” noodles, covered with a delicious eggy gravy, with prawns, pig’s liver, fish fillet and pork.
“Yee fu mee” - aromatic, roasted noodles which has been blanched then wok-seared with lard, dark/light soy sauce and sesame oil, before being covered with the same delicious gravy as for the “sar hor fun”.
A container full of crisp, golden-fried lard on the table, to be added to one’s noodles!
Back to the Beach Street “sar hor fun” and “yee fu mein” spot a while ago - standards still pretty high and the hawker seems to do no wrong, applying all the right techniques to churn out the best-tasting noodles dishes in Penang, bar none!
Searing the noodles using lard over high heat, with a bit of soysauce to lend saltiness and flavour. This imparts the “wok hei” fragrance indispensable in Cantonese wok-fried dishes.
Braising the ingredients for the topping: pork, pig’s liver, very fresh prawns, choy sum greens and egg are used, accentuated by a little garlic (but no onions). The taste was magical - nothing in HK, KL, Singapore or anywhere else for that matter comes close to it. A bit of corn-starch slurry was added towards the end of the cooking process to thicken the sauce before ladling it over the noodles.
The end-result - to-die for Penang-style “sar hor fun”: a combination of wide noodles (hor fun) and thin rice noodles (mai fun) topped with the delicious porky, seafood, eggy sauce. Even neighbouring food paradise, Ipoh, has nothing which tastes like the Penang version.
“Yee fu mein” - toasted noodles (with an incredible fragrance and texture), rehydrated then fried over high heat - same treatment as for the “sar for fun” then smothered with the same sauce. Absolutely amazing flavours.
The stall also does a very respectable “Hokkien char”, a close cousin to Singapore’s fried Hokkien mee. A departure from his Cantonese roots, the hawker produces a Hokkien char version which will bring tears to his Hokkien customers - the flavours he produced reminded us of the versions we had from our childhood - rarely found in Penang these days. Even the slightly light brown colour of the sauce was correct - somewhere between the light/pale Singapore-style Hokkien mee and the pitch-dark brown KL-style Hokkien mee. The common characteristics between the Penang, Singapore and KL renditions are that all use a combination of pork and prawns with fat yellow Hokkien noodles.
This place opens daily, but closes on the 1st and 15th days of each Chinese lunar month - you’ll have to double-check with your hotel concierge. You can usually find calendars in Malaysia/Singapore which displays both the Gregorian and Chinese dates together.
