Culinary Exploits Around Penang

Some lively chickens outside Chowrasta market

Food, specifically street food, or hawker food as it's called in Malaysia, was one of the top (top!) reasons we came to Penang.  I think we did a pretty good job sampling the flavors of this food-obsessed city.  Malaysian cuisine mirrors the diversity of the city, consisting of mainly Indian, Malaysian, and Chinese cuisines, but also Arabian, Thai and Javanese cuisines.   Over the years, all of the flavors mixed and married, culminating in an unabashed celebration of multi-ethnic fusion.

On our first night, we ate at Tek Sen, a very famous institution.  We figured, in a city of culinary heavyweights, a restaurant that has flourished for over 45 years has to have done something right. 

Fish curry, potato loves with sambal sauce, double cooked pork

The above picture doesn't show the pièce de résistance, the smoky sticky tamarind (asam) shrimp.  We ate it too quickly!

View from our hotel room in the morning - locals getting breakfast

Tandoori chicken, garlic cheese naan, sides

Biryani chicken

extensive Indian menu at Kapitan

Hawkers preparing various fried noodles

Famous (very packed) stand selling chendul (or cendol), an icy peanut green bean noodle dessert

Shrimp mee (very very shrimpy!)

Asam laksa

 We checked out the very famous Nasi Kandar at Line Clear on Penang Road:

Scary fish heads.  Can you see the flies?

Lots and lots of choices - a bit intimidating!

Our Nasi Kandar plate

We checked out a bunch of hawker stalls on Lebuh Chulia:

Char Keoy Teow cart

stir fried in a very hot wok!

end result: char keoy teow with shrimp and baby clams

Lok lok - buy a stick and dip in your sauce of choice

Roti canai = awesome

All the varieties of roti you can imagine

We drank fresh coconuts at every opportunity, and sampled baby bananas, jackfruit, wax apple and green mangos.  And I discovered a variation of dragonfruit that I really, really like - the magenta colored variety!   It tastes SO much better than the white fleshed dragon fruit.