Georgetown, Pulau Pinang, through the lens of food

by Holly

One thing that was really great about Penang was the food. I will tell you about some of the delicious things we had while we had while we were in Georgetown and where we ate them. We were only there for a few days, but we tried to jam in as many meals and snacks as possible.

Le Petit Four Patisserie
First thing Saturday morning we had taken a Grab to Chew Jetty on the advice of our guidebook. We were nearly killed by tour busses getting across the busy street to the jetty itself. The jetty was absolutely packed with tourists in the main narrow walkway that went out onto the wood structure over the sea, and the air was still and broiling hot. It was interesting to see how people built piers up from the bottom to support structures over the water. I understand all the wood used in these lasts 10 years max and the concrete piers don't last long either. These piers for a porch look to be built from 20 liter pails filled with concrete cast in place over wood posts.

When we finally got to the end we got a view of the bay.

The tide was out and the exposed soggy expanse was fragrant and steamy. By the time we fought our way back to shore through the throng of tourists, everyone was tired and sweaty and wilting in the sun. We attempted to walk past some street art on the way to a museum. Penang is known for street art and it was cool to check out the murals as we explored the town.

But after a couple blocks in full sun at around 11am, people were starting to lose it (see facial expressions on kids in above pic). So we ducked into a cafe we saw along the way to enjoy some AC and cold drinks. It was tastefully decorated, full of natural light, and blissfully cool. As we sat sipping our cold drinks, we watched the bakers preparing pastries for the day through a picture window in back.

These desserts looked so incredible we had to sit around waiting for them to be put out for sale around noon, rather than continuing our sweaty walk to the museum. We spent a shocking sum at this cafe and took a collection of world class pastries home to our airbnb for lunch. They were worth every ringgit; I wish this shop had a branch in Somerville!

Rayyan's Gourmet

While Becky and the kids waited for the pastries at Le Petit Four, I walked up a few more blocks of Lebuah Armenian looking for some take out food to pave the way for our pastries. I stepped at random into little place called Rayyan's Gourmet. I ordered char kauy tiao (stir fried thick rice noodles), nasi goreng cina (chinese syle malaysian fried rice), and mee goreng (stir fried malaysian noodles). We took these home with our pastries and ate them at our place for lunch. 

My mind was blown with how good all three of these dishes were! This place only has 3 stars on google and it seemed like nothing special, but the food was truly outstanding. This was my first taste of char kwey teow (炒粿條 - Chǎo guǒ tiáo). I just kept being astounded with every bite at how wonderfully delicious and packed with flavor this dish was. The chewy rice noodles, green onions, prawns, bean sprouts, and powerful sauce combined to make every morsel a pleasure. The mee goreng and nasi goreng were also especially good. I've had all these dishes elsewhere in Malaysia and this place was certainly the best. Maybe we just got lucky with who was cooking that day.

Coffee and Chocolate Museum

After lunch and a rest, we went out again in the afternoon to see the Blue Mansion, Cheong Fatt Tze.

Afterwards, we tried once more to walk to a museum, but it didn't work out. We did stop in at a little "museum" of coffee and chocolate around the corner from the Blue Mansion. Mostly this is an outlet to sell the products of this company, but the little museum was neat.

They had a few cacao trees in pots out front with fruit on them. It was the first time I've seen this plant in person.

In the shop, we got some chocolate for the kids and some instant coffee for ourselves. Instant coffee is popular in Malaysia - at the grocery store about twice the shelf space is given to instant products as to whole bean or ground coffee. I have never liked instant coffee at all, and only used it as a last resort. In Malaysia, nearly every drink is extremely sweet, including the packs of instant coffee. We bought some coffee at this shop because they had a sugar free white coffee mix and our airbnb had no drip machine or nearby coffee shop.

This sugar free white coffee mix from Koon Kee soon grew on us though, and now we actually really enjoy it, particularly as an after lunch cup of coffee. We have not found a source in Cyberjaya, so we bought out the stock at the airport shop when we were traveling to Singapore recently. You can buy it on Lazada (no Amazon in Malaysia...), but so far I have not succeeded in completing almost any online purchase here.

I also bought two servings of Civet cat coffee here, since I've always wanted to try it. I did not think it was any better than regular coffee that hasn't been pooped out by a jungle animal. It was something like 30x the price of regular coffee.

Balloon Festival food stalls
As Child 2 writes in her article, we had a nice evening at the balloon festival. All along two edges of the field harboring the festival were tents with food stalls (see some in the background below), maybe 50 in total.

At first, Child 2 and Buster were put off by this food scene, as they usually are by street food type situations. However after drinking some iced lemonades and sitting on the field for a while, they got comfortable enough to eat some treats from the stalls. We tried a few different things, but ended up going back to one satay stall to get a total of about 50 little chicken skewers over the course of a few hours. We also ate some cups of hot buttered corn and fried potato spirals on a stick.

Dim Sum
Next stop on our Penang food adventure was a dim sum place down the street from our apartment called Zim Sum. We got there about 10:30am on Sunday, so it was already getting hot outside. This restaurant was very crowded and open to outside. The food was pretty good.

This grandpa felt compelled to step in to help Child 2 with her chopsticks.

High Tea on Penang Hill
As Buster writes in his post, we had a superb afternoon tea atop Penang Hill Sunday afternoon. The elevation and mountain breeze made it cool and pleasant in the shade, the view was unmatched, and the food was great.

Char Koay Teow on Macallister
We got back late from Penang Hill, but I didn't want to pass up the chance to have another meal. Child 1 and I walked down the street from our apartment to a cluster of street vendors. I was eager to repeat my shockingly good first experience with char koay teow, so I ordered a couple to go from the stall in the pictures below. The couple running this tiny stall make just this one dish.

I couldn't tell everything they put in, but it included oil, a few slices of a cured chinese pork sausage, prawn, rice noodles, bean sprouts, egg, and some seasoning/sauce. It was tasty but not as good as the one I had from Rayyan's Gourmet.

Here is the center of the stalls, with some tables for guests to sit. You can order at one of the stalls and have the vendor bring it to your table. There were many of these clusters across Penang. Too bad we don't have this in Cyberjaya.

Historical fabric of Penang
Penang has a much different feel than Kuala Lumpur. Of course Georgetown is far smaller in an absolute sense, but it is also set up on a smaller scale. Buildings in KL tend to be new, large and not that easy to get between since the city is fairly big and developed in big chunks at one go. Georgetown has many more small buildings packed more closely together in finer grained neighborhoods. Check this view from our apartment.

Many of the buildings lining the streets are colonial era shophouses, with a commercial shopfront on the first floor and a residence on the second floor.

The second floor extends over a walkway on the first floor. You may think this would give pedestrians a nice place to walk out of the sun and traffic, but the tradition seems to be to make this outdoor covered area an extension of the shop, filled with seating or merchandise. So while some covered front areas are passable, many are not, leaving a walker bumping out into the street or weaving between parked motorbikes.

Georgetown has a sort of colonial-grandeur-fallen-into-disrepair charm. The place is bursting with character.

There are many small and interesting shops and eateries filling the shopfronts, and the older buildings give a depth to the fabric of the city.

Penang has a high percentage of chinese malaysians vs. malay and indian malaysians. This impacts the feel of the city in noticeable ways. There is no shortage of great chinese food for one! There are more subtle effects as well; for instance look at this elevator button pad in our apartment building.

You will notice there are no floors ending in 4. Four is an unlucky number in chinese culture, so while in another place we may have stayed on floor 24, in Georgetown we stayed on floor 23A.

As lovers of older buildings back home in the US, Becky and I admired many of the 19th century buildings in Georgetown. The bungalows are particularly handsome, but many seem to be neglected and in disrepair. There was one across the street from our apartment getting restored, and one next door to the that with an art gallery (and enormous tail coming out the back and to the right)

We also saw some in use as car parks.

We stopped in at a western cemetery we had seen through the window of a Grab while driving home one day. Even though we were out at mid-day, which we generally try to avoid in Malaysia, it was not unbearably hot in the shade of the magnolia trees amongst the cool stone grave markers and green grass.

A ruined school building next to the western cemetery was in use as a parking lot, but looked like it must have been lovely when it was intact. It looks too far gone to restore reasonably.

We were just in Singapore recently, and were struck with the many similarities between Penang and Singapore. Of course both were British Straits Chinese settlements and share much history, but it is interesting to see how they have diverged since that time.


High Tea at Suffolk House
Walking back to the apartment from Dim Sum on Sunday, we had stopped in at the Penang Museum. Housed in a colonial era school building, the museum was uncrowded, cheap, and had some interesting small exhibits.

We learned about a mansion built on the land of Sir Francis Light in 1804 called Suffolk House. This building had many roles over 200 years, but had most recently fallen into neglect and ruin. An impressive restoration was undertaken and the building is now a restaurant and function space. We wanted to check it out so we went for high tea on Monday just before heading to the airport to come back to KL.

The building itself is nicely designed and restored, and has placards you can read while walking around the premises.

The tea service was more expensive and not as delicious as the one we had on Penang Hill.

There was one majestic old tree on the grounds that really catches the eye.

In fact there are many of these trees around Penang. I'd like to find out what kind of tree they are, but so far none of our Grab drivers have known.