Penang Peranakan food

I was chatting to my colleague just before our holiday to Penang and she kindly shared with me a few restaurants which she had been patronising on her own frequent visits to Penang.

Prawn Noodles at Malay Street

As a result, we ended up going to quite a few restaurants this visit to Penang!  Of course there is that seafood one which I wrote about in my last post.  But because of this, we ended up going to fewer hawker stalls (except for the Malay Street coffee shop which we went to THREE times to eat the famous Tiger Char Kway Teow and our favourite lor bak and prawn noodles, washed down with "ampala" juice - also known as "umbra" or "kedongdong").  I have to admit I have also stopped writing up on my Penang hawker experiences - it was getting a little repetitive but maybe next trip we will have to make an effort to revisit all the old favourites.

Food - from left to right: jiu hu char, inche kabin chicken,
assam fish head, rendang, hee peow soup, acar/otak/hae bee

Anyway, we are trying to work our way through the nonya restaurants in Penang and our first visit this trip was to Ivy’s Kitchen on Jalan Chow Thye.  This is a small family restaurant - Ivy’s the cook and her husband runs the front of house.  The restaurant is not that big so it might be good to make a reservation.

The food was excellent - we had the assam fish head, the jiu hu char (bangkwang or jicama fried with cuttlefish, and wrapped up in a lettuce leaf before eating); a beautiful creamy otak-otak, fried inche kabin chicken, achar, rendang (nice and tender) and hee peow (fish maw) soup. 

My favourites were definitely the otak - this was incredibly creamy and delicate, and the assam fish head - the gravy was so tasty and the dish was sprinkled liberally with bunga kantan (torch ginger). But everything was really very tasty and the portions were  generous (sized for our group of eight).  In summary, this is was authentic and yummy nonya food at reasonable prices.  We're coming back here.

Food (clockwise, from top right): Laksa,
Too-thor thng, assam fish, jiu hu char,
babi pongteh, fried mixed veg.

The next restaurant we went to was quite different - Richard Rivalee's, in M Mall.  Richard Rivalee is a well-known fashion designer in Penang but he learnt how to cook his grandmother's nonya recipes.  He started off with a small cafe beside his boutique but has now expanded to a larger restaurant in M Mall.  I didn't have time to visit the mall but from what I understand it is targeted at tourists and as such the shops mainly sell branded goods so I don't think I missed much! The restaurant itself is really very charmingly decorated, with lots of little Peranakan touches about the place such as the tiles on the walls, the kebaya clad mannequins and the Chinese couplets on either side of the doors. 

Food-wise, I have to say that the rempah/ gravy for all the dishes were really tasty and authentic.  But I was not too happy that a number of dishes were not available, for example the otak-otak, and the ikan purut (fish stomach), which I had been looking forward to!  Also, when I ordered the fish dishes, they were the same selar fish whether it was achar fish or assam fish (what I ended up ordering after finding out that the otak and ikan purut were both not available). 

Besides the two fish dishes, we had jiu hu char (again), babi pongteh (rather nice), and too-thor thng (peppery pig stomach soup).  We also had a rather interesting mixed vegetable dish - with four angle beans, petai beans, fried together with onions, sambal and prawns.

But what I really enjoyed was the assam laksa!  The gravy was rich yet piquant, and the helping was pretty generous too.  It's not quite a "pure" assam laksa as I think they added coconut milk, which would make this "laksa cham" or a cross between assam and lemak laksa.  Mmmm.... I could come back for this next year, too. 

Can't wait!

If you want to look at all my Penang food reviews, they are here.

Fresh Seafood in Tambun, Seberang Perai

Prawn Village, Tambun

My family has started making little trips to the Penang mainland on our annual trips and this year we decided to go to a seafood restaurant in Tambun.  Tambun is a little fishing village with just one major road running through it, and not much more.  But because it is on the river (Sungei Jawi), it gets a lot of seafood and therefore, seafood restaurants.

My Penang Uncle recommended Prawn Village, Tambun, and since he is the local we followed his advice.

The restaurant is not much to see from the roadside (see photo on the right).  But upon entering the restaurant, we were greeted by a wide expanse of water - the river runs just behind.  We were happy to have a table just by the river.

The river behind

Mantis prawns

True to its reputation, the restaurant wall is lined with tanks of water on the way in, each with its own inhabitants.  I didn’t go and examine them closely (I don’t want to know my dinner that well) but if you want to see some photos of the live seafood you can check them out here.

We ordered a range of dishes - prawns, fish (cooked steamboat style in a hot pot), mantis  prawns, clams, crab and the like.

I rather like the mantis prawns, which I have never noticed on menus in Singapore.  It’s not really a prawn per se, being more like a mini lobster/shellfish.  It gets its name from its larger pincers which apparently resemble those of the praying mantis insect.  As they are fast, and the pincers are sharp, these little shrimp are considered lethal predators, spearing or smashing their pray with the pincers before gobbling them up.

I had eaten it before on our previous trip to Nibong Tebal, cooked in sambal.  This time round, they were lightly battered and fried.  I would liken the texture of the meat to being a little more like crayfish than prawn, tender and delicate, quite contrary to its "lethal predator" image.   Just glad I didn’t have to deal with the big pincers!

Of course I also had masses of their delectable crab cooked with sambal chili but not smothered in sauce (which is Singapore style).  They gave us huge wooden mallets to crack open the shell.  Photos of the crab, and of some of the other dishes are below:

Chili crab

Clams in Chili and garlic

Lovely fresh fish, steamed Teochew style

Prawns with garlic

Stuffed Yu Tiao and Tau Hu

And the price?  I can tell you, that for a group as big as ours, the price can only be considered extremely reasonable, especially by Singapore standards.  Not gourmet cooking but well-cooked, tasty, super-fresh seafood dinner.

We went back to our hotel, full and happy 

Durian Daze in Penang

King of Kings

Another year, another durian holiday in Penang!

As is our family tradition, my extended family whipped out our schedules (on our respective phones), whilst eating our Chinese New Year lunch, to figure out when we could make our way to the Pearl of the Orient to feast on the fabled fruit (and other goodies) for four days, three nights.

By now, we have our routines down pat: the setting up of a common $ pot, the hiring of a van and driver to take us all around, the identification of a few nice peranakan restaurants for dinner, and of course our durian routines, which I summarise here in a few simple rules:

1.  Go in the morning.  Mornings are critical because these are when the durians which fall in the night are harvested and brought to the collection centres.  Later in the day, the durians would be less fresh and more importantly, the good ones would have been eaten by the tourists who got there in the morning.

At the durian collection centre 

2. Go to the farms and collection centres.  Avoid the city centre.   That’s where durian prices are jacked up in order to fleece all the tourists.  No self-respecting local goes there.

3.Go with a knowledgeable local.  Which could be a friend, family member or your driver.

Having said all that, be flexible should things go wrong or the durians run out.  Our group was turning up in two batches - the main group on Thurs morning, then another two the next morning.  As such, we decided to have our first batch of durian the afternoon of our arrival (breaking rule 1 above) as we would otherwise have to wait one whole day more before sampling the fruit..

We went off  first to a durian collection centre in Balik Pulau recommended by a friend.  Unfortunately, by the time we got there, it was a little late as they had run out of durians after setting aside the majority of the day’s durians for a durian party at a local hospital (in other words they were probably quite a reputed supplier, just our bad luck to appear late in the day).  So we had to go to a roadside stall we had passed earlier on, called Durian Kaki.  Easy to find as there is a gigantic inflatable durian right outside.

Durian Kaki 

Here, we had a good time feasting on King of Kings (really creamy, slightly fermented taste - *yums*, lots of meat on the seed), a rather good XO durian (another one with that alcoholic note) and Black Gold (bittersweet flavour) and one last one which I can’t remember as it was not impressive.  The King of Kings was really good so we ordered a second one - of course it is the most expensive of the lot but well, this is what we came to Penang for.

The next day was not a big durian day since we were waiting to meet up with our fellow travellers, but on Saturday we went off to a durian collection centre in Balik Pulau, followed by a durian stall.  There were just three of us (everyone else had gone off to Ipoh for the day).   My uncle was our "durian tour host". The durian collection centre had been recommended by a friend, but the selection was a bit limited (were we there a little late?). Anyway, we had Cheh Puay (green skin) and Ang Hae (red prawn) - both rather good. We then went to a small roadside stall where we had Hor Lor (gourd-shaped) which I found rather hard.  We also had a kampong durian, which as everyone knows is hit or miss and in our case it was a miss.

Cheh Puay (Green Skin)

My uncle then drove off to a private house which was also serving as a durian collection centre.  Quite interesting as the house was in the middle of a housing estate! I could just imagine the neighbours complaining in Singapore. 

Unfortunately "the boss" was not around and only one of the "couriers" was there.  So we could not buy any durians.  The house itself had a number of fruit trees (nangka I think) and one batch of rambutans had just come in. 

We also went and bought more durian (mostly Ang hae ) to bring to the people who went off to Ipoh.  They would eat it later, as dessert after our seafood dinner.  (More on that later).

So that’s all the durians we ate during our little jaunt this year.  I was quite amused subsequently to learn that my colleague was in Penang around the same time, staying at a durian farm (in a tree house at that).  Maybe an idea to explore for another time :-)