Sunday 5 April 2009

Piggin' Out: Penang - wantan mee

Rommel still wasnt satisfied with our hawker food feasting in Penang because he'd wanted to try the Lorong Selamat char kuey teow but we'd gone and eaten at other places and so we never got round to Lorong Selamat.

So, after saying bye to Joyce and Arnaud who headed to the airport, we decided we'll finally go there to check out the most famous of char kuey teow.

We got there in decent timing, parked the car and were promptly told by the parking attendant that all the char key teow stalls there closed on Tuesdays. "WHAT???" we said disappointingly. But the attendant was nice enough to recommend the kopitiam at the corner of Lorong Selamat and Jln Macalister as he said the wantan mee there was not too bad.

Disappointed and hungry, we said okay. We'll give it a try.

First to arrive at our table was the wantan soup. (I always order wantan soup. I love dumplings and can survive on dumplings alone. It's also my benchmark for good wantan.)

My verdict: Love the wantan skin texture... soft and delicate, unlike the ones we sometimes get in KL where it's too thick and starchy. The pork and prawn fillings were crunchy, yum.


The wantan mee came next. This was a realy surprise because I've never had wantan mee like this before. The sauce wasn't the usual dark soy sauce thingy. Instead, it was light coloured, slightly starchy and laden with chee yau char (crispy pork lard). The sauce gave the noodles a nice, glossy sheen. Tasted good too with the chee yau char. Then again, anything tastes good with that! The noodles itself were nice, not too tough and chewy.

We noticed that there was a stall selling hokkien char oyster mee. We had no idea what it was and so we had to order to find out! What came looked like yellow noodles stir fried wat tan style with some oysters in it. After the delicious wantan mee, this was pretty much tasteless. I don't think I'll order this again in future...


And so, despite not having eating the Lorong Selamat char kuey teow yet again, we found something else that was pretty good too! That gives us the perfect excuse to go back to Penang, don't you think?

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