Penang Restaurants

Penang has a reputation as a food paradise; be it haute cuisine or hawker fare, Penang offers a thrilling and exotic mix of delicious cuisine to choose from. For those who want to sample the local cuisine, a delicious selection of exotic dishes including Malay, Chinese, Indian, Indian Muslim, Thai and Indonesian as well as western food is readily available at reasonable prices.

Local cuisine

With a plentiful supply of fresh food from the surrounding seas, Penang is a leading centre for seafood. While there are many restaurants which offer good food, diners can enjoy modestly furnished stalls which spring up all over the island; here the atmosphere is informal and the food is inexpensive. For the more adventurous tourist, hawker food is available at roadside stalls along Kimberley Street, near the Burmah Road Supermarket, the Esplanade and along Gurney Drive.
Laksa is one of the best-known and loved hawker dishes in Penang. A bowl of steamed spaghetti-sized rice vermicelli is first liberally garnished with finely sliced vegetables including onions, cucumber, red chillies, pineapple, lettuce, mint and pink bunga kantan (ginger buds). A steaming hot curry soup, sour and thick with fish meat, is then poured over the mixture. A spoonful of fish paste is offered for those who like some additional saltiness. While for decades Penangites and visitors only knew this variety of the dish, a lemak (coconut milk) version was later introduced as an alternative.

Where to eat

In the heart of Chinatown, along Lebuh Kimberly and Lebuh Cintra, lie a horde of coffee shops and restaurants known for their good, local Chinese dishes, while in the evenings, hawker stalls come alive with delicious offerings. Elsewhere downtown, sample the many tasty hawker dishes in air-conditioned comfort at the Food Court at KOMTAR. The suburban districts of Air Itam and Pulau Tikus offer equally great, if not better, offerings.