24.06.13

My Trip to Malaysia Post #3: Padang Brown + New Lane

Penang is the state KNOWN for having amazing hawker food. For all of you who don't know, a hawker centre is a collection of many stalls selling different varieties of super cheap food. Our first stop was Padang Brown located on Jalan Brown (Brown Road)!

If you ever get here, there is a few things you MUST try. 1. Coconut Juice (with the coconut flesh!) 2. Popiah 薄饼

The Popiah here is made from super fresh awesome crab! In fact, somedays you can even buy crab claw meat from her if she has any leftover! But today it was plain old Popiah! Something about the radish, crab and the skin (and whatever else they put in there) makes it so succulently juicily delicious! Literally getting hungry as I'm typing this!

3. Assam Laksa or Penang Laksa

This is for you Lauren! The Penang Assam Laksa was voted CNN's 7th most delicious food in the world out of 50 foods around the world! I would completely second that. The Penang Assam Laksa consist of tamarind, mint, mackerel, pineapple, lemon grass, onion and the beautifully delicious laksa noodles! It's just the perfect refreshing sweet and spicy noodle soup!

4. Char Koey Teow (stir fried flat rice noodles)

Fried Koey Teow is my personal bias, it is my favourite go to hawker food! My close second is Prawn Noodles but it's harder to find good ones that's why Koey Teow is #1. On the surface it is such an easy dish,  fry some noodles in a nice hot wok with pork fat, dark soy sauce, light soy sauce, prawns, cockles, bean sprouts, chives and Sambal (chili sauce)! But finding the perfect Fried Koey Teow is like finding a needle in a haystack!!

5. Orh Kuih 芋粿 or Yam Cake

What you get? A smooth creamy yam taste with a fragrant crispy shallots and a nice hit of sweet and light chili sauce! Delicious beyond words!

Later that evening, we went to New Lane Hawker Centre at Jalan Burma (Burma Street). We ordered Steamed Cockles (served with yet another type of chili sauce), Chicken Satay (chicken skewers), Pork Porridge (肉粥) and Loh Bak (卤肉)

The sad thing about New Lane is that their prices used to be reasonable and the food used to be AMAZING! But during this trip we found dishes were around RM 10-20. Granted it is still cheap after converting to say Canadian currency, but the food was not as good as it was. Hopefully it's just a trial phase for the hawkers, would be sad to see such a great hawker centre go down. Miaos, yes there is MORE! Penang is just filled with THAT much food. But till next time, ciao! =)

Images by Me