Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Haven for Food

Being a Penangite (but atypical one), who have lived here for the past 3 decades, I've never knew many places with good food around here (cause I eat home-cooked food). So recently, kennysia threw a challenge to anyone to write good reviews about food in Penang, cause he is coming here for a promo stint for a new dance studio.

Anyway, here is a kenny-siau blogger who actually took the trouble to write a quite comprehensive review (with nice pictures) on 50 good places for Penang's food. Here's another KS craze.

One thing I don't really understand about "typical Penangite" is that, what is there to boast about when it comes to food? Nothing that actually, really "grand" about, those char koay teow, whether Sister or Lrg Selamat, or Laksa for the matter, that can be found everywhere.

But one thing really stands out about Penang, is that, there are just too many hawkers around selling the same kind of food. Sometimes, I wonder about the hygiene aspect.

This sparks one theory of mine, that, typical Penangites, being "greedy+stingy+kiasu+rude", probably like "extra+cheap+convenience+nice" food being served right at their doorsteps.

That is the reason why one sees a lot of hawker stores being located at every corners of the Island. If you throw a stone from the air, chances that you hit a hawker is probably > 80%. This made Penang Island appears very disorganized and dirty.

Hawker store right in front of the entry of apartments

Not to mention, the typical Penangites, being very inconsiderate to park their grand cars anywhere they like in their grandfather's roads.

Once, a friend from Australia who visited me in Penang, passed a remark that she was actually so surprised to see there were so many hawkers who set up stores anywhere they liked. That scenario gave her an impression that Penang is so dirty and disorganized. She said she've never seen such fenomenon in Australia.

I agreed with her and was then too embarrassed to say anything.

1 comment:

yuexian said...

i agree. that's why i always wonder why all the aussie i met here love penang? however, they told me they wouldn't dare to try those hawker food though, due to hygeinic issue *embarrassed*