Hokkien mee stall no.6 - Kompleks Sri Selera Bayan Baru

Don't usually add the red chilli to my bowl of hokkien mee but in this case it is neccessary as this version of hokkien mee is so different from what I am accustomed to. 

If you come at the right time, that is when the soup has developed its full , rich flavour , 

you too will return again like what I did here.

Nowadays there are plenty of pretty bad hokkien mee sellers around who put much sugar in the soup you feel like you want to strangle them on the spot . However , when I tried this for the first time , I liked it instantly. More pork slices , kangkung which is extinct in other stalls , more egg slices than elsewhere , slighter bigger portion , still low in price ....pretty happy with this.

Jalan Raja Uda - a nook for great teatime hawker food

You probably know how much I have been groaning and bitching on how bad Penang hawker food is becoming these days .Well ,

I walked away with a most positive experience and my faith in good old hawker food renewed .

Now , I'm not going to make this easy for you. Since it is the tourist throngs,  that spell the death knell to quality hawker food which Penang is so famous for.  Will post up a few photo clues so you can hunt them down if you want. All the hawkers are in the same area. 

First up. 

Cendol. 

If you ask me to go to that famous stall in Penang Road I would rather jump off a cliff. The other day at Gurney Paragon , I had their worst ever bowl of cendol which came with frozen unthawed green noodles . What a disgrace !

Compare with the one I found here. It is perfect ! I love this. The noodles are silky , the gula melaka fragrant and the santan not too jelak with a super cold ice shaving that doesn't go warm before the 5th mouthful. 

Perfect !

Cook Idea - Chai Leng Park

Before Cook Idea came along, we were all at the mercy of one super cut throat seller hawking this dish at Kampung Benggali. 

Either that or we had to take a drive down to Ipoh or KL for kai see hor fun noodles. 

Chou Yang - porridge to stave off the heat and excess

One minute it's raining , next minute it's hot. 

Fish head curry stall - Sin Kim San , Rangoon Road

It's been raining hence the weather is much cooler today. Time for something spicy. An excuse actually . I just want to set my mouth on fire while satiating my craving for some maddeningly soft fleshed fish .

Fish head curry does just that. It's the best of both worlds. 

The expert sets to selecting the species . Kalah or Kannah I don't know which or what, but damn, the flesh is damn, damn , damn good....like a cross between chicken , swamp  crab and frog leg . Yes I have eaten frog legs but that was YEARS ago . This is a fish we're talking about with texture of  

3 animal species. 

All this talk about the head, where's the fish head ? Ok let's lift it out from under the luscious pile of okra , onions and mint now shall we ? 

Kopitiam Tanka - Malacca's version of Yong Taufoo

From the neat rows of fishpaste stuffed into aubergines, deep fried beancurd puffs , shitake mushroom caps , one can guess what are the bestsellers. 

Apart from the usual offerings, they've gotten more innovative and even have crabsticks and whole scallops shells plastered with more fishpaste too. For that , you'll have to poke your head in the 2 chiller bins . Be prepared to be amazed by the variety those chiller bins contain.

Hot Bowl - Rangoon Road

One street behind , is where you can find the Lorong Selamat Char Koay Teow lady . The lady has a temper so famous she even made Anthony Bourdain laugh when she gave him a sound shelling . On the street behind Lorong Selamat, is Rangoon Road , where yet another bad tempered species plies his trade .....this time the male version.

Everybody thinks he has male menopause syndrome , but me , I think his ass is on fire , since he can't sit down properly due to the fact that his curry mee paste is so fiery it probably welded his um , back bottom down there openings together . There's got to be some leftovers some time and he's bound to get a taste of his own medicine more times than us paying customers.

And because there is a pony tailed girl in here with....surprise ! a bad temper too , I quietly confine myself to snapping a picture of the menu. 

Gou Lou Wantan Mee - Kampung Malabar

Update , May 2016 : the wantan mee has gone down the drain . Wantan dumplings are smaller , noodles not as good. Not recommended .

Fans of Gou Lou Wantan Mee from the former Yi Garden Cafe , you can now heave a sigh of relief. They are still in operation . In fact most of the famous stallowners from that kopitiam have set up stall here....from the Pan Mee & Braised Chicken Feet seller , to the Teochew OhChien also the Oh Mee stall , ya, you can come get your fix here.

Man I love this seller, his wantans put others to shame. They're bigger than dimsums and do not have one ingredient less .

Yummy Yam basket at Hooi Wang

If only you could smell and taste this.

Hooi Wang's version is super addictive to the very last white beehoon on the plate. The beehoon has been deep fried into puffs to absorb the delicious sauce that runs out once you start eating the basket itself which is made from yam . Prick away and you will find that the insides are as yellow as a pumpkin which makes it even more intriguing . In most establishments , the basket is just for decorative purposes , not very appetizing, but one bite of this and you will see all the chopsticks steadily picking away at it.

There are at least 3 varieties of mushrooms , crunchy celery , snowpeas , brown squid , baby corn ooohhh....so , so good. 

Bee See Heong - another version of Chinese Curry Prawns

Sure , you' ve seen the brand of Chinese tea before but have you seen the teapot ? Well I haven't . The leaves inside are good on first pour , gets bitter midway but has no flavour when you add a second round of hot water , so I'm pretty sure this is a mix we're getting .

Restoran Xin Xiang Gang - Kuala Lukut

This is one of those hut like village places where you have to remove the doors panel by panel and put them back when you close for the day. Easy to spot , just look for the shop with the most women servers

What 70 ringgit can get you at East Coast Grill - Red Garden

Did you see the headlines in the papers today ? 

Yes we're all getting fed up with hawkers giving us nothing in our RM4 bowl or plate of noodles.

Sometimes I feel like it's more worth it to eat at restaurants since you now need 4 bowls to feel full which is ridiculous really. Work that out by 4 pax and I'm sure you'll agree with me.

 There are many grill joints in Penang named East Coast, on the island but not all of them serve good food.

This one's different.

This whole feast cost us a grand total of RM70. Here's what we enjoyed. Some of these shellfish dishes were featured in a post before this.

Disgusting looking Malaysian Chinese hawker dishes that are good for health

When I'm feeling under the weather I load up on gross 

looking Chinese foods.

This hawker on Kimberley Street sells duck porridge and 

after eating a whole bowl , whatever latent heat that is trapped in my liver is expunged almost instantly.

I can feel it escaping from my back and there is a general feeling of relief from that.

Free School fried fritters

Actually I don't understand why other operators just cannot get this fritter recipe right. All you need is a small dose of kapor or lime powder which has by now proven to be carcenogic if eaten regularly. Why we eat such things well, I really have no answer for that other than we used to trust others whenever they told us certain foods were good for us. But now that we know better we still get drawn to them like moths to a flame. Yellow noodles, wantan mee, canned fried dace, luncheon meat...all equally bad for us still we love eating them.

So anyway, that's what this stall is famous for. 

Fried fritters. 

You can get yam fritters, yam with niangou fritters, sweet potato fritters and banana fritters.

Hock Chicken Rice - Tanjung Bungah

Most Penang TAR students would know this chicken rice stall. Initially located in a small shack by the roadside, when development engulfed the area, they have since relocated to the Tanjong Bungah wetmarket makan area.

All the pictures you see below was the meal we had. 

All in Rm16 only.

1. One generous plate of chopped chicken together with one par boiled liver plus spring onion garnish that's missing eleswhere

Waxed duck

You know that the Chinese New Year is just round the corner when stacks of these cured meats make their appearance.

The best of course come from China and Hong Kong.

 Salted and basted in rice wine, the flattened birds are smoked for around one week before they're ready for consumption.

The curious can try it out in commercial restaurants , just look out for Lup Ngap.

Double steamboat - a partition of torture

The steamboat is a modern version of the Mongolian hotpot. With the latter, charcoal is used to heat the soup while steamboat relies on gas or electric stoves to do the job. 

Most people do not find this concept appealing .Me too initially, until the day it dawned on me that hey, I actually know how to develop a hearty soup on the spot. While satisfying, the whole steamboat experience isn't very exciting. We need a little spice in our lives.

So last week, we ended up here, where half the excitement lies in that nasty red looking half side. The soups are partitioned and they will never mix, thus you've got the best of both worlds. Crazy  Spicy hell on one side and normality on the other .

The better 3 dish meal

Two lanky white men walked into this crumbling dinner shack on stilts yesterday. I heard one of them say

" Geep mi yor besd " with a big grin, in all good intention. 

The local Mandarin speaking waiter shot him a blank look and started squirming about trying to look like he knew what he just said, without giving the game up.

The taukehsoh ( ladyboss) soon stepped in and asked 

in English 

" So what you want ? Cheeken ? Feeeshhh ? Where gee ? "

They nodded at all three and left the cooking all up to her.

Gee...no they shouldn't have left it to the ladyboss to recommend. Especially when they themselves eat spicy stuff and think you, would prefer less, um, stimulating dishes.

But let's forget those two for a moment and take a look at my meal first.

Butter prawn with slightly crisp egg batter , sugar granules and bayleaf. Tasty but a bit overdone . My biggest gripe is that the prawn was way too small for a dish like this and nobody in the kitchen had the courtesy to warn us beforehand.  

Roasted duck rice - Goh Chew Cafe

A roasted duck meal like this would cost a bomb in Beijing or Hong Kong, ah, but not in Malaysia. Simple, filling and very delicious , this roadside stall is where I get my fix every now and then.

This coffeeshop is not my favourite place in the world, so most times if I don't do a takeaway I will request for my meal to be sent across the street to another premise.

Sau Tao - XO Sauce Scallop noodles ( non halal )

I'm not into the whole Penang Curry hoopla but I certainly have a craving for pungent  Hong Kong style dry wantan noodles. After I first ate this, I told myself, omg, if I were homesick or longing for some good old Hong Kong noodles, this one will do just the trick. 

Been months since the shelves were restocked and I wasted no time in grabbing some.

Nowadays, the wantan mee sold at the hawker stalls is so suspect....I seriously wonder if I'm gonna die from boric acid poisoning thus I try not to eat as much of the dish. Keep it to a minimum while I gorge on this one.