The Penang Food Paradise (day 2)
Anna Palo-Kuy
I slept soundly after all the walking at the Tanjung Bungah Night Market during Day 1 in Penang, Malaysia.
Naturally my second day was full of boundless energy and more food trips!
You will never go wrong if you follow the local Penang crowd. Their love for eating have produced food markets and food stalls everywhere you turn. For extra shopping, take the bus to the Batu Feringgi Night Market. It has a Chiang Mai, Thailand feel because a majority of the goods come from Chiang Mai, except of course for the pewter and batik.
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| Prawn Hokkien Mee | |
It is their local equivalent of Greenhills shopping where you can find imitation designer bags and watches. I went for their local specialty pewter and batik. The shops were run mostly by young people. After my dinner experience at the Long Beach Café (which was really a food market), I will tell you about my good bargain finds.
Going around the stalls at the Long Beach Café, I decided to go for the dishes I was not familiar with. So it was Alfalfa Wheatgrass Shake, Prawn Hokkien Mee and Garlic Chapati with Dhal for my meal.
The Alfalfa Wheatgrass perfectly matched my grass green top! Wow! It looked great in the photo. The taste was just as well. It had the flavor of good health and semi-sweet coolness. It reminded me of pandan with buko juice.
The pandan taste was prevalent and I wondered if we refer to pandan as alfalfa, or alfalfa as pandan. But I found out that alfalfa is not pandan and vice versa. Alfalfas are delicious sprouts. It was one of the memorable Penang tastes I had!
The Garlic Chapati was chapati with bits of garlic mixed in. I still am not sure why there was no strong garlicky taste at all. I tried having it without anything else and I also tried having it with the dhal. Still no taste. Hmmm. Maybe I am accustomed to the small but terrible garlic bulbs found only in the Philippines. Or maybe I miss Manang’s garlic rice for breakfast. Somehow I was not satisfied in a garlic sort of way.
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| Alfalfa Wheatgrass Shake | | After my garlic episode, I was mentally listing my shopping list to give me some hope for the rest of the remaining hours of the night. The night markets open at 7 pm and last till 11 pm. And don’t forget that the buses also stop plying their routes at around that time.
The hokkien mee (or Fookien noodles) was served hot. I asked for a "no spice" version but I guess the meaning here is semi-spicy. The broth was sweet and flavorful. The noodles had the home made feel and taste but I wondered whether they are really accustomed to making it themselves or ordering them somewhere else. Anyway, they were great and went well with the broth.
There were three choices for this dish: small (or another word for plain as depicted in the pictures), medium (or with prawns) and large (or with prawns and meat slices). To test the soupy waters, I got the small for only 3RM (Malaysian Ringgit). Surprised that the small one could have small shrimps, I quickly tasted the soup. It was good too! The delicious broth had the combination of shrimp and beef broth.
The serving was not measly for a small order. It was a generous helping of authentic hokkien mee. Fookien style noodles at its best! Heartily (from the stomach to the wallet) satisfied, I headed to the shopping portion of my food trip.
For my good finds, I bargained hard for a medium-sized pewter vase from 180RM to 70RM. A dream fulfilled, I moved on to the batik store and bargained some more for batik bags from 20RM to 10RM. Isn’t Penang bargain friendly? I got a skirt bargained down from 20RM to 10RM. I stopped there for now. I was confident that the sun would shine on my Penang Day 3!
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