Georgetown Street Food: A Feast You’ll Never Forget

If I could marry these noodles, I would. Wan tan mee

For lovers of Asian street food, no word conjures up deeper desire than “Georgetown.” This port city on the island of Penang, just off the mainland Malaysian coast, is easy to get to and has its own way of doing street food. It is something of a cross between the organized hawker centers of Singapore and the jumbled food carts clogging the streets of all self-respecting Thai cities.

The Way to Eat Street Food in Georgetown

Of course, Georgetown has its fair share of classic restaurants. With a few important exceptions (Tek Sen), you will want to stay out of them (if that is not true for you then you don’t want to be taking any advice at all from me). In Georgetown, you mostly want to be on the lookout for the drink shops. These are “hole-in-the-wall” type of places, with three walls and open to the street. The middle of the shops will be full of tables, and a drink menu will be plastered somewhere on the wall.

Around the edges of these establishments you will see a variety of small food carts. These are the types of carts you would see settled along the street sides in Thailand, but in Georgetown the cart owners have established relationships with the drink shop owners, and work alongside these shops.

Here is how it works. You generally walk into the shop and find a seat. The owner of the drink shop will then come up to you and take your drink order (coffee, tea, fresh lime juice, Milo, Coke, etc.). You then walk around and take a look at the carts and order what you want from the individual vendors. The drink shops are small enough that you don’t generally need to know a table number (like you would in a Singapore hawker center). You pay for food and drink when they show up at your table.

Finding the Best Georgetown Street Food

There are a thousand Georgetown food guides out there. I read all of them before I went. None of them were very useful . . . or necessary. We went to a few places that were recommended, and we went to a lot of places that we just sort of sniffed out (or plopped down in because they were there when we were hungry). In general, just order what looks and smells good and don’t worry too much about whether you went everywhere Bourdain went, or if you had everything on the “50 FOODS YOU MUST EAT IN GEORGETOWN OR YOU ARE A TOTAL LOSER!!!” list.

We love dry noodles so we couldn’t get enough wan tan mee. I still dream about them. And Georgetown has lots of great char kway teow (fried noodle) stalls. Oh and the laksa! There were so many kinds of noodles and we tried them all.

And fried stuff on a stick!

And duck!

And pork!

Seriously, just point and eat. Repeat until physically unable.

We also went to one of the more Singapore-like, very large hawker centers called the CF Food Court and had a great meal. And if you can brave the traffic to get there, New Lane Hawker Center is another place with lots of different food carts set out along the street.

Nasi Kandar: The Delicious Mess

Nasi kandar should be disgusting. I don’t know how it works. It doesn’t take any thought and planning. It is just a mess. But it is the most delicious mess you can hope for.

Here is how nasi kandar works. You walk into the shop, and you get a plate with rice (either plain rice or biriyani). You then choose if you want any meat or fish (a piece of fried chicken and a piece of fried fish is pretty standard). The worker then takes your plate, heaping with rice and fried protein, to a seemingly endless line of trays filled with curries of all kinds. There are bright orange curries, and deep, rich brown curries. There are yellow curries, and red curries. There are curries that scoff at any attempt to determine what color they are. Using a ladle, and with quick, practiced flicks of his wrist, the worker then splashes a little of each of those curries on your plate of rice. What was a rainbow of curry sauces becomes a brown, unappetizing mass loading down your plate.

You are so lucky!

Because that mass that looks so awful packs an amazing variety of intense flavors. It shouldn’t work. It is like throwing 50 kids without any musical training whatsoever into a room with instruments and hearing Beethoven float gently skyward.

It is so good.

There are nasi kandar places all over Georgetown. We went to a place called Line Clear, and it was great. We went to other places that may not have even had names, and they were also great.

Other Food Highlights

If you like roti, Sup Hameed is a great spot to go. This is not roti like you find in Thailand, but the thicker, beadier roti of India. Order a few roti and you will get a variety of curry sauces to dip it in. A great, cheap breakfast.

And Tek Sen — what can I say? This was one of the best Chinese meals I have had in my entire life (including everything I ate in China).

But really, just go and spend some time in Georgetown and eat everything everywhere. It will likely all be really good.

Just know that because travel, you are going to pack on a few pounds in Georgetown.