Sample Phenomenal Street Food, at a Hawker Center in Penang, Malaysia

Every Serious Food Writer Who Comes to Penang Leaves Saying the Same Thing

Anthony Bourdain said it was one of the best food cities on earth. Beyond that, chefs who run Michelin-starred restaurants in other cities come here and eat at plastic tables in open-air hawker centres like tourists. Penang’s reputation is not marketing. The food itself is Hokkien Chinese in its foundations, but centuries of Straits trade pulled in Malay, Indian, Thai, and colonial British elements into a cuisine that exists nowhere else in quite this combination. You could eat in Georgetown for two weeks and not repeat a dish.

Hawker centres are open-air or semi-covered spaces where individual vendors run single-dish stalls, each specialising in one or two dishes refined over decades. The correct approach: find a table at the centre you want, order from two or three different vendors, and wait for the dishes to come to you. Each vendor tracks your table number mentally. Pay each vendor separately when the food arrives. Do not try to carry dishes yourself.

What to Order

Char kway teow is the Penang dish most associated with the island internationally. Flat rice noodles, dried shrimp, cockles, Chinese sausage, bean sprouts, egg, and chilli paste, stir-fried over extreme heat in a well-seasoned wok that has spent years accumulating a particular flavour. Uncle Tan’s char kway teow on Kimberley Street cooks over charcoal rather than gas, which produces a wok hei – that smoky breath of a superheated wok – that gas simply cannot replicate. The queue on weekends runs 30 to 45 minutes. It is worth it once, though perhaps not twice on the same trip.

Penang asam laksa is different from any other laksa in Malaysia: sour fish broth made with tamarind and flaked poached mackerel, served with thick rice noodles, prawn paste, pineapple, cucumber, and fresh mint. The sourness is distinctive and divisive. The best version is at the Air Itam market hawker centre, where the Penang Air Itam Laksa stall has been operating for decades and the queue moves through people efficiently.

Hokkien mee uses a prawn broth made by slow-cooking prawn heads and shells for hours. The depth of flavour is unlike anything a Western prawn bisque achieves. The Bridge Street Prawn Noodle stall, run by the Lau family for three generations, is the benchmark. Arrive early; they close when sold out.

Cendol: shaved ice, coconut milk, pandan-flavoured green rice flour jelly strands, red beans, and gula melaka palm sugar syrup. It costs 3 to 4 MYR. Penang Road Famous Teochew Cendol in Georgetown is the three-generation operation that defines the standard. The queue looks intimidating and moves faster than it should.

Roti canai is Indian-influenced and universally eaten for breakfast: flaky flatbread cooked on a griddle, served with curry dhal or fish curry. The mamak coffee shops that have been operating since before sunrise are the correct venue at 07:00.

The Hawker Centres

Gurney Drive on the northern coast runs in the evening with sea views and a mix of vendors that locals and tourists share equally. The food quality is high despite the tourist visibility.

New Lane (Lorong Baru) on Jalan Burma opens after 17:00 and runs deep into the night. More chaotic and local-feeling than Gurney Drive; the satay and the duck koay teow here are both worth seeking out.

Red Garden in Georgetown has a stage in the middle with live music most evenings and a broad range of stalls. More comfortable than New Lane and less anonymous than Gurney Drive.

Kimberley Street food court in the heart of Georgetown operates day and evening and is the most convenient for visitors staying in the old city.

Georgetown Beyond the Food

Georgetown is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the historic quarter carries two full days easily. The compression of Chinese clan houses, colonial British administration buildings, Tamil Hindu temples, and Malay village architecture on streets that sometimes run only 50 metres is found nowhere else in Malaysia.

The street murals by Lithuanian artist Ernest Zacharevic – the best-known shows two children on a bicycle – have become the most photographed objects in the city. They are good. The genuine heritage architecture on Armenian Street, Pitt Street, and the clan jetty area on the waterfront is better and more durable.

Penang Hill (Bukit Bendera) is reached by funicular from Air Itam and rises 820 metres above sea level in five minutes. The summit has a mosque, a Hindu temple, a small hotel, and a resident population of flying squirrels that emerge at dusk.

Getting to Penang

Penang International Airport connects across Southeast Asia and to Kuala Lumpur (1 hour flight, or 4 hours by bus). The Georgetown ferry from Butterworth on the mainland runs 24 hours and costs 1.20 MYR. The Penang Bridge (23 km, one of the longest in Asia) connects for road traffic.