There’s no beating Penang - the top street food destination in Malaysia - in terms of quality and spread of dishes available.
Some options I saw at the street food fair in King Street/Church Street/Bishop Street precinct yesterday:
Char Koay Kak (fried radish/rice cakes in soysauce, fish sauce, beansprouts, egg, salted radish, garlic).
Tau Hu Hwa (soybean curd, usually served with white sugar syrup in Singapore and elsewhere in Malaysia, but also available with palm sugar syrup in Penang).
Bubble tea
Sliders, with Chinese stewed pork & other fusion-Asian options
Malaysian desserts like cendol, bubur cha-cha, cendol, etc.
Lye Lye Food Court on Terengganu Lane has a large, varied collection of local hawker eats - all-Penang clientele here, and the food is kept simple and rustic. What I had here during my most recent visit on 5 Feb 2016:
Penang-style char koay teow (Penang version is lighter and doesn’t use dark sauce like KL or Singapore ones)
Wantan mee (Penang’s version has dark soysauce, like KL version, and different from HK’s light, subtle soup version, and chilli-ed Singapore version).
Sui kow (similar to HK, KL and Singapore versions).
Penang-style popiah (the Penang version is tastier than Singapore’s version, but has lashings of light soupy gravy).
Penang-style Hokkien mee - Penang’s version looks similar to the one in Fujian, China - but its red colour here is a result of the addition of chilli paste, unlike the Fujian version which get its hue from prawn-roe; also very different from Singapore Hokkien mee which is stir-fried or KL version which comes with a dark-sauced, lard-laden version.
Indian sweet apom: Penang’s eggy version is different from KL and Singapore’s less aromatic egg-less version.
Sungei Pinang Food Court is a collection of itinerant hawkers who congregate at this spot on Sungei Pinang Road (right next to the Penang Japanese School) each morning, catering to the breakfast needs of Penangites on the way downtown from Jelutong, Perak Road, Bayan Baru, Minden Heights and Bukit Gelugor residential areas.
I find the food here to be even more rustic than I’m used to - catering more towards blue-collar workers working in the various vehicle workshops and factories along Sungei Pinang Road. The food here is not really to my taste, but I was curious as to the popularity of Sungei Penang Food Court among local diners.
What I had during my most recent visit here on 28 Jan 2016:
Jelutong morning market is another goldmine of good eats, especially in the morning when the wet market draws in the crowds. One of my fave breakfast spots there is a cluster of food stalls along Ipoh Lane nicknamed “Under the Big Tree” food stalls.
Some of the breakfast options there are:
Chinese-style “mee Jawa” - the version here is light and flavoursome, and one of the best-tasting ones I’d had in Penang.
Penang-style “chee cheong fun”.
Penang “char koay teow”.
Penang-style “wantan mee” - I liked the one here: the blend of dark soysauce, oyster sauce and lard in its dressing was tasty. A standard serving comes with one fried wantan and one poached wantan, besides the old-fashioned non-charred, non-caramelised “char siew” which is characteristic of old hawkers in Malaysia & Singapore.
The popiah looks far more interesting than the rather more pale and somewhat bland version I had in Melaka. Will have to seek it out (along with lots of other stuff) when I’m next in Penang.
Food pron! Everything looks delicious! Penang style popiah is quite different from what I had in Xiamen. The skin is the only thing I recognise.
I’m fond of cold silky tofu.
I have been looking through some old photos and planned to post the street food ones (mostly China/HK/Taiwan/Vietnam etc. Didn’t get a digicam til then).
Presunto - Penang popiah is also pretty different from Singapore ones, where minced raw garlic is used as one of the flavour condiments. Penang’s best popiah is, IMO, the one at Padang Brown food centre - opens around 3pm each day. The crabmeat adds an additional sweetness in flavour.
Another popular dining precinct downtown for locals is the Presgrave Street Hawker Centre which opens in the evenings. It’s famous for the Hokkien noodle stall, although the wide variety of dining choices there make it a great one-stop spot to taste Penang hawker fare.
So far, the clientele is exclusively local, as this popular dinner/supper spot is still out of the radar of foreign visitors. Some of the hawker food items we tried at the most recent visit:
The famous Presgrave Street Hokkien noodles, of course - the pork-shrimp broth is spicy, with deep, mellow flavours.
“Oh chien” (oyster omelette) - the version here is too eggy - I prefer to have more of the gooey tapioca starch stuff, which seems to be missing here. But their fresh oysters were very large and sweet.
Pan-fried Teochew tofu - very soft and smooth.
Penang-style wantan mee - the version here is very tasty, with a lard-laden dark-sauced dressing.
“Sui kow” pork-shrimp dumplings, served in a light broth.
Hainanese-style pork satay - super-delicious here, so good, one can have them on their own, although the Penang-style lemongrass-flavoured peanut sauce is quite okay.
P.S. - I still much preferred Malay-style satay, especially the thick chunky peanut.
sck - the palm sugar gave the whole desert a deep, mellow flavour - sweet, with a slightly sourish after-taste. I really liked it.
Sungei Pinang’s hawker food lacked the subtle, delicious flavours I find in good hawker stalls. The ones here do seem shoddily cooked - I won’t recommend a special trip there. It’s one of those instances where being popular with the locals doesn’t mean the food is good.
I am guessing palm sugar is not heavily processed? That’s my gripe with highly processed sugar used often in soybean curd. All it tastes is one dimensional sugar and not much of anything else…
You got me interested about the palm sugar- next time if I come across it in the grocery aisles I am going to snatch myself a bag to try.
