Malaysia | Penang's pushcart vendors, hawkers part of diverse "food paradise"

PENANG, Malaysia — There's fresh crab, live from the tank, and bowls of miniature clams ready to pop out of their shells for sautéing in a spicy sauce with garlic and lime.

The air smells of roasted duck and skewers of charcoal-grilled chicken. One stall sells herbal soup; another grills seafood on a stick.

Welcome to the Red Garden Food Paradise, my neighborhood hawkers center.

"Hello Dolly" plays on the boom box. We hear it from our hotel room next door. Might as well stop by and see what's going on.

Claim one of the white-plastic tables and take note of the number on the side. Then go from stall to stall, giving the cook your table number and ordering in small, medium or large portions — clams, the oyster omelet, fried rice, stuffed eggplant, chicken satay.

Sit down and put in your drink order to the guy in the red shirt in charge of cleaning off the tables. Try the lime juice spiked with a sour plum to wash away the heat. Then wait for your food to arrive. Pay when it does — maybe the equivalent of $10 to $12 for everything, including beer.

Malaysians seem to be constantly eating. Miss the street food in Penang, the island off Malaysia's west coast known as the cultural and culinary melting pot of Southeast Asia, and you miss a nightly movable feast that takes place on street corners and outdoor food courts like this one called hawkers centers.

Books have been written about Penang's hawkers. Most started out as traveling pushcart vendors hawking their food from portable kitchens with stoves powered by gas canisters.

Lately things became more organized with licensed vendors operating permanent stalls in centers such as Red Garden where hygiene standards are high.

Malaysia is officially a Muslim country, but the crowds who come out nightly to eat mirror Penang's diverse population, a fusion of ethnic Malays, with roots in Indonesia; Chinese and Indians who joined British colonialists in transforming the island into a center for the spice trade, and later tin and rubber.

A walk though the compact streets of the old port city of Georgetown is literally a religious experience, with Hindu temples and Chinese temples, mosques and Christian churches within blocks of one another.

When it comes to food, locals come together to seek out their favorite hawkers for the best Chinese coconut tarts; Nasi kandar, Indian Muslim fare; or laksa, a Malay noodle soup of fish, tamarind juice, pineapple and mint.

"Penang is food paradise," a local man who was born here told me. Perhaps he's biased, but there is a long list of foods to sample.

Starbucks, not

Red Garden is a fairly new center with a fun atmosphere, but it's geared more toward tourists from the surrounding hotels than purists.

Real foodies would probably be happier at a local spot such as New Lane Hawkers Centre — crowded and chaotic — with tasty duck-meat noodle soup ($1) and wet spring rolls (also $1) stuffed with tofu and turnip.

Eating this way is an easy way for tourists to meet locals. My favorite for this became the bright and clean Esplanade Food Centre on the seafront at Fort Cornwallis in the old British colonial district.

Malay Muslim families and students from a nearby school gather here in the late afternoons for snacks and drinks.

When I asked one family if they minded if I took their picture, they invited us to sit down with them and sample their Singapore duck.

Following a self-guided tour of traditional craft- and food-purveyors mapped out in a brochure published by Penang Heritage Trust, we walked along Lebuh Chulia, nicknamed "Lonely Planet Street" for the small hotels that cater to backpackers, and found the Kimguan Coffee Factory.

Ong Kok Weng, the owner, wasn't in, but his helpers were there mixing up a batch of beans to which they add sesame seeds, margarine, salt and sugar.

A few blocks away in Little India, we found Bala Murugan's drink shop where we went mornings for 25-cent cups of the Tarik, or "pulled tea" sweetened with condensed milk, and nasi lemak, triangle-shaped packets of banana leaves stuffed with rice, coconut and fish.

Beer on ice

Penang has many good restaurants, and when we wanted to escape the heat and crowds, we sometimes combined a meal in air-conditioned comfort with a street stop for tea or dessert after.

Our first night in town, as yet uninitiated to hawker-style eating, we wandered through the crowded Gurney Drive food stalls on the seafront, but ended up eating at a big, noisy indoor/outdoor Chinese restaurant called the Bali Hai Seafood Market.

Beer arrived in an ice bucket like expensive champagne, and we settled in our seats at a picnic table decorated like a beach hut with a thatched awning and twinkling lights.

Sensing that we were a little unsure about the menu, our waiter invited us to "tour the aquarium."

We watched as a boy in shorts climbed atop the fish tanks, and scooped out crab and geoduck clams with a net.

We selected a small fish for two. The waiter wrote down our order in Chinese. "How spicy?" he asked. "Not very." He recommended that we order it steamed with plums and ginger. It arrived on a platter topped with fresh, steamed vegetables. For around $25 for two with beer, it was more than we could eat and one of the best meals of the trip.

Searching for dessert later, we stopped at an Indian cafe a few doors down.

The Pakistani owner waved us in. He hoped we'd order dinner, of course, but all we wanted was the honey ice cream we saw advertised on his sign board.

What we got was a thin pancake filed with warm bananas and topped with ice cream drizzled with honey.

Heaven.

Carol Pucci: 206-464-3701 or cpucci@seattletimes.com