Penang street food

Penang Street Food

Pork belly broke me. I've been assiduously reminding myself that this is not a food blog, but that was before thin strips of lean pork belly with paper thin skin, braised with some mirin, ginger, star anise, and a dash of soy, then reduced until the fat was almost completely rendered, and ladled over rice. I've just gotta go there.

Penang is all about street food. For me. It's the first place in a month where I could go to a restaurant and order off the menu, but why do that and spend 18-20 MR for a nice, plated version of something I can get for less than 10 if I walk up and point the cook toward what I want? Even better, I get to watch the magic happen.

And street food is by its nature open and exposed, but by the culture of operators divided into close cliques. Not so much in the tourist hubs, where vendors gather in food courts that are absolutely antithetical to the lackluster American mall experience, although even locals stop enroute to or from work or if that's simply the easiest place to go, but once you get a block from the tourist drags you get into the local subdivisions where ethnicities or professions can hang out and talk common talk. Even while cruising down the main drag, every dingy little alley too narrow to accommodate vending has chairs or stools wedged in and a crowd of cabbies, bike peddlers, tour hawkers or whatever else squished onto the sitting arrangements, eating whatever's frying on the cart and drinking the amazingly sweet and rich local coffee. And as it pushes toward tomorrow, the faces might have changed but it's the same guys talkin the same shop and arguing about the same plays. Eventually, when the last of his boys have gone home or petered out, the guy (or lady, but frequently a large man) packs things away so he can catch up on the world for tomorrow's events.

I just kinda dig it—these people hang out with friends making food or drink and small talk; looks like a lot of fun as long as I don't have to live it day in and day out.

Aside from traditional restaurants, of which I can say nothing, there are funky little family-run sort of “restaurans,” the street cart cookers, and then coffee carts that sell goodies baked and packaged elsewhere.

A restauran is a sitting area with plastic tables and chairs managed by people who sell drinks. At the periphery, either of the building or alleyway or courtyard, the folks who do the cooking—of homogenous ethnicity—set up carts. Each cart does something different—one is stirfry, one is soup, one is deep fry &c. (Food courts operate the same way.) You order from the cart, sit, someone comes and either takes your drink order or charges you for space, and then someone else brings the food and collects the fee. And in most places, each cook has a separate till, so if you get soup and stirfry, you pay from whichever comes; in some places, there's a central don who totals up everything and collects all the food money from everybody (drinks are always separate).

For the most part, restaurans are either Indian or generic Malaysian, which is about half Chinese-style and half Chinese flavors with Indian preparations. Each has a noodle station, where you can get maggi noodles or mama noodles (think: packaged ramen with additives of nutritional merit), rice noodles or egg noodles, stir fried with a leafy green and some protein.

An Indian cook will most likely start off with oil, aromatics, and the noodles, add some broth even more salty and concentrated than the packet of stock, a big dollop of oyster sauce, and the protein. Don't watch: the protein comes from a vat that's been sitting since it was made, and most likely it was made to last the day. Finish by cracking in an egg, scraping the lot onto a plastic sheet on a sheet of newspaper, and folding it into a modified burrito cone.

Roti is a different beast. Depending on how farang-friendly the operator is, saying, “Roti? One,” will bring a slice of dry bread, garlic toast with egg, or an amazingly lush seared egg dough like a thick, savory crepe with a bowl of meat and gravy.

And here's a good place for a word on curries. Yes, yes, there is no true “curry” in Indian cooking: curry is English for “I don't know what all they're doing or how to tell the difference, so let's call anything saucy a curry and leave it at that.” But at home, you order specific varieties: beef, lamb, chicken, or dal. In Penang, the curry is mainly about the sauce. When you order from the guy working the steam table section, you get a pile of rice, and then he dollops on your protein choices—beef, mutton (which I've grown tremendously fond of), chicken, sundry fish—and finishes it with a few scoops from this, a few scoops from that curry: maybe you like spicy, so he uses a ladle of the spicy beef, a hefty scoop of the dal, and a little of the mutton for color. There's nothing to do with actually eating the curry in and of itself, it's lube for the mole mountain of rice at the center of every plate.

Malay restaurans are similar deals: a quick-fry noodle station, a soup station, and a steamtable without the steam. Somewhere in the back, probably right next to where they do the dishes, there are big pots or woks or vats where they cook up the hotel-pans of food, which range anywhere from pepper-stuffed lungfish to full grouper heads to veggies to big stacks of fried eggs and generally as soupy as their Indian counterparts. This is where we met the glorious, glorious pork belly of perfectly-balanced gastronomic bliss: mainly lean meat with some fibrous texture in the skin, barely-salted sweetness, and lots of slow-cooked-pig-fat love.

So you place your order, or get your plate of rice and get doled out your selections, and go sit in one of the plastic chair/table setups while someone gets a drink order and food arrives with a bill.

And this is where the magic happens: the cooks and waiters, dishwashers and grandkids and grannies and decrepit uncles and polished businessmen cousins all come through, all sit around chatting, all intermingle with the ordinary customers in such a way that you really can't tell who's customer and who's employee. People on the street swing by for a word or mill about as they were, which is to say, the people-watching is phenomenal.

And the only difference with the carts is that you'll sit on chairs on the sidewalk, Thai style, or go takeaway. Nut carts were pretty cool: nutmeg, hazelnuts, chestnuts, peanuts, and corn, either boiled or roasted in screaming hot woks to order. So were the fruit stands: big plastic tubs a kid would fill with toys or art scraps holding pre-peeled and sliced fruits of every variety, at which you point and say how much you'd like to spend. And the variety is mind-bending. We generally don't think of savory fruits, but nutmeg is fantastic. I think there was ginseng and similar things I associate with herbal teas, and as I went poking through them—the proprietor gave me a wooden poker for sampling—they turned spicy and savory until a pearl onion, which surprised me for its familiarity as much as its presence in a fruit stand, tasted nice and sweet.

It goes without saying that asian pears, lychees, pineapple, mangosteen, mango, papaya, dragonfruit &c. are not to be compared with any of their American derivatives.

And I have to mention the burger: pre-formed frozen turkey whatnots thrown on a hot griddle with a dollop of both crisco and Parkay. Cook until the grease comes out, pressing and flipping frequently, then cut in half thin-ways and make sure it's cooked to death. Slap a piece of individually-wrapped processed cheese byproduct between the halves and set aside. Crack an egg into the grease, scramble and spread thin. Put the patty on the egg, swizzle with mayo, and fold up the package into a buttered but untoasted bun with cucumber and shredded cabbage. Burger special.

For a burger delux, add slices of spam.

And pretty well everyone approached the cart with an evasive bob-n-weave, although I bet most thought they were walking straight. And I'll applaud the judgment: what better food for after drinking or treating a hangover?