Ben Shewry's Guide to 
George Town Dining

We stayed at the Eastern & Oriental Hotel, in the Heritage Wing.

The E&O is a gorgeous colonial-style hotel that was built in 1885 by the Sarkies brothers, who opened the legendary Raffles hotel in Singapore two years later. While it is a splurge, it is a fraction of the price of comparable hotels, such as Raffles, so it’s well worth the indulgence.

We also visited Farquhar’s Bar in the lobby. It has sea views and leather club lounges and they make a mean dry gin martini with a twist.

Once again, this was a very busy spot. People on the island of Penang have no problems lining up for great food. When we arrived, there were extremely long lines for CKT and Hokkien mee (noodles in prawn soup). We visited AK Satay and tried some of their chicken satay to go. Tender and flavourful, with an amazing satay sauce. A lot of people were snacking on satay while waiting in line for the CKT or Hokkien mee, but we had had our fill of lines, so we decided to skip those dishes. I would be keen to try them both on my next visit though.

For lunch, we wanted to try Penang-style laksa. This is a deep brown-coloured, sour-style soup that is very different to what we tend to think of as ‘laksa’ in Australia, which is often rich with coconut and called curry laksa in Penang.

Penang Road Famous Laksa looks a bit like a tourist trap and it was the only place we went to that had a line filled with mostly tourists, so we were a little sceptical, but it turned out to be delicious. The line also moved very quickly, which was a relief when we were standing in that blistering sun.

We ordered the asam laksa. It’s a sour and slightly sweet fish-based soup, with asam gelugur (similar to tamarind), torch ginger, prawn paste and rice noodles. To serve, the soup is topped with sliced chilli, red onions, cucumber, mint leaves, fresh pineapple and lettuce leaves. We also tried their char kuey teow with duck egg. This was a Muslim CKT, so no pork, but the flavour was not lacking and, once again, we were impressed by the incredible quality of the food in George Town.

After visiting a shopping mall for some aircon and a bit of a browse, we went to find some more food. At Penang Satya 99, we tried chicken tomyam satay with cucumber, onions and satay sauce. We also had another excellent CKT, cold beers and a sugarcane juice (so refreshing!). We also enjoyed tiny little coconut pancakes filled with banana for dessert.