What's up and welcome to another episode of Chopstick Travel.
My name's Luke Martin, and today is day 3 of our series here in Penang, Malaysia.
This is an incredible place full of amazing street foods.
If you didn't check out yesterday's episode click the link down in the description box.
We started the day with my all-time favorite breakfast items.
Our first dish has arrived and what we have ordered here is the roti canai.
This is absolutely sloppy yet delicious-looking.
Our second dish has arrived. These are two of my all-time favorite breakfast items here Malaysia.
Roti canai and roti bakar. Look at that.
That is beautiful. Let's have another bite.
We also sampled the best i.ced coffee that I've ever had
It is definitely a very strong coffee. A little bit of a bitter flavor from that black coffee
but very sweet at the same time from all that condensed milk, and I think she adds a little bit extra sugar.
And I'm very satisfied with this.
So today we are about a 25 minute drive outside of
Georgetown, the main city in Penang, to a place called a Air Itam.
There are some really popular restaurants out here that we want to try.
And we've got a whole day of eating planned ahead of us.
So I hope you guys are ready. Let's get started.
So we are at a restaurant today for breakfast that is serving curry mee, which is a type of noodles with curry.
And this place is called Sister Curry Mee.
It is in like an ancient restaurant.
This has been here for 60 years, the same two sisters operating a very small stall just under a tree here.
And it's a very simple dish but it looks really good.
So we're gonna order up one and try it out.
Okay, we're sitting down now with our bowl of curry mee, it looks really good.
And actually, a funny fact is that we tried to come here over a year ago
and her hours said she was supposed to be open but they weren't here. So I was really disappointed.
So today I'm super excited that she was here.
And we have our bowl of curry mee, it looks absolutely beautiful.
There's quite a few different ingredients in here.
So first and foremost are the noodles, and there's actually two different types of noodles.
There's like a thinner noodle and then a thicker noodle.
There's pieces of squid on top.
So there's some squid and some tentacles, pieces of tofu, also pieces of
coagulated pork blood, and then tons of chili.
So I'm gonna grab all this chili here.
Look at all that. Wow. And I'm gonna mix that in mix that into that broth.
Get it nice and fiery hot. Oh, man. I asked for extra chili.
I'm hoping that that wasn't a mistake because this looks like it's gonna be pretty spicy.
So let me mix this up and I will try this out here.
So let me grab some of the noodles. Just gonna go in for the noodles first. Let's try that.
Oh, man, that looks beautiful.
Mmm.
First things first, that is extremely spicy.
That is fiery hot, but those noodles are awesome. Those are cooked to perfection.
There's two different types. One of them's a little bit more slippery, and the other one's a little bit more firm.
But man that broth is hot and thick. Check that out.
That is some seriously thick broth.
Okay, I'm gonna go in for a piece of tofu, get a piece of blood here, and find some squid.
I think yeah, that's a piece of squid there. So let me try that.
Mm. Oh nice. That's good.
Oh man.
The contrasting textures of those three items, the tofu, the squid and
the coagulated blood is really-- they're contrasting, and it's really nice.
The blood is very soft and kind of falls apart.
The tofu is very spongy and has absorbed a lot of that broth.
And then the squid is firm and has a little bit of a bite to it.
And then chase that with a little bit of noodles that is good.
Man, that is some seriously spicy broth though. Wow.
I think if you're just a regular spice lover and you don't love a lot of chili
you could probably just go with the amount that they give you right off the bat and don't ask
for extra like I did. But it is good.
- What do you think? - This is really good.
It's not so much milky like other curre mees that I've tried, but
I think that's because we put so much spice into it.
But yeah, the noodles are really nice. The flavors are good.
The additions add nice flavors and different textures.
So overall pretty good, and you gotta come and check this place out.
It's super famous.
Finished off with our curry mee. That was really good.
It is such a cool setting, and the two sisters
they are so cute and friendly and they're very carefully assembling your bowl of curry mee.
So definitely check it out. Air Itam is only a 25 minute drive, like I said, from Georgetown
and there is a couple other famous restaurants. So we're gonna head over to one right now for some laksa.
The main drag here in Air Itam is kind of like a market.
There is shopping, and fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, meat, everything you can imagine.
But also lots of restaurants, lots of little street food stalls, but it is extremely chaotic.
We are here on a Sunday and it is super super busy.
So we are at the laksa stall now. This one is so popular. It is completely packed out.
You're gonna be sharing tables if you're sitting here.
But that's okay because this laksa looks seriously good.
This place is called Air Itam Laksa and this is our bowl of laksa.
So what it is is a mixture of a lot of ingredients.
So the main thing here is the noodles, and then we have a broth which has a lot of fish.
So you can see this is all kind of just like minced up fish. There's lots of herbs in there. There's onions.
There's mint, there is ginger flour, there is some red chillis on top.
I saw him put some lettuce in there, and cucumbers. I'm sure I'm missing some other ingredients.
So I'm just going to kind of give this a little mix. Check out those noodles underneath there.
Oh, man, it smells really really fragrant.
So let me grab some of this. Make sure I get a little bit of everything, and let's try that.
Mmm. Mm. Oh man, yeah.
That is so full of flavor. There's literally so many flavors going on at once there.
I love the mint in it, it gives it such a freshness.
And there's also some crunch from the cucumbers, and I think they put a little bit of lettuce in there too.
The noodles hold the broth really well, and there's not any barely, any really seafood flavor from that fish.
But it gives it that like, that nice meatiness that you want.
And, man, that is-- it's like a little sweet, a little sour, you can definitely tell there's some lemon juice in there.
That is like the perfect combination of tons of ingredients.
That's beautiful too.
So we also ordered up a drink here. He told us it's like a nutmeg drink, which sounds really interesting.
I've never had a drink with nutmeg in it. So let me try this out here.
Mm. Oh yeah, oh man.
Yeah, definitely a little bit of that nutmeg spice and it's definitely got some lemon juice too.
It's almost like a nutmeg lemonade.
It kind of reminds me of like, halfway between like an eggnog and lemonade. That's pretty good.
This is such a complex flavor profile for one soup.
I don't think I've ever tasted something with so many flavors going on at the same time,
And even though there's fish in it, it definitely doesn't feel like you're eating seafood whatsoever.
It's really kind of hard to explain.
Sweet and sour, and just full of flavor.
And I love, like look at it. Just look at those noodles.
They're holding onto all of that minced fish, all those herbs, everything.
It does a really good job of just clinging on to all those ingredients.
Wow.
Finished up with our noodle breakfast. That was probably the best laksa I've ever had.
That was so flavorful, so complex.
And I just noticed actually on the back wall, they have a picture of
the late, great, and one of my idols, Anthony Bourdain has even eaten at this restaurant.
Which is pretty crazy because this isn't just right in Georgetown. This is kind of out in the countryside.
So I think that spot is definitely worth the trip to Air Itam.
And if you do come out here, you might as well try curry mee, too, because it is also very good.
So now I think we're gonna head to a temple that's close by and check it out.
So this temple is called Kek Lok Si and this is a Buddhist temple.
And I don't know what Malaysia's obsession is with building these temples on top of mountains
but it surely makes for a big hike to the top. But the views are usually rewarding like this one.
This temple is really beautiful. We're gonna walk around a little bit longer and check it out.
This temple is a very unique layout. There's all kinds of different buildings.
They're all unique in themselves, where their decorations are a little bit different than the last building.
But I would say that it seems as though they don't maintain this temple
necessarily, as well as some of the other temples. But it is really big
so I imagine it takes a lot of funding to maintain a place like this.
So now we are heading back down the hill
and we are gonna head to get a little snack before we head back to Georgetown.
So we are back here in Georgetown.
We have come to have a dessert. Probably the most famous of all the desserts here in Malaysia.
This is called cendol. So we're gonna go to this really popular spot and order one now.
- Miss, this is yours. Three ringgit.
- Yeah. - Thank you.
- You stir it before you eat. - Okay.
Okay, we have our bowl of cendol. This place is probably the most famous dessert shop in all of Penang.
It is just called Penang Road Famous Cendol, and this is our bowl of cendol here.
So what it is is these really interesting kind of worm-like
noodles that are green from
pandan, which is a special type of leaf herb, and then there's also
big chunks of ice you can see in there.
So it's like a shaved ice cold dessert, and then everything is just swimming in coconut milk.
So the owner told us we got to mix it up pretty good before we eat.
And you can see it's starting to turn brown because of those beans in there, those red beans. (It's actually from the coconut sugar.)
So let me mix this up a little bit more.
And this is just like a comfort dessert. Super refreshing, perfect for the hot Penang weather.
So let's try this cendol.
That is really good.
It's not too sweet whatsoever.
It has a nice pan of coconut flavor, and it almost sort of reminds me of
when you're finished eating a bowl of cereal, and the milk at the bottom has kind of got all the sugar from the
cereal kind of mixed into it.
And then this one is nice and packed full of these beans which give it
another little bit of a sweetness and some more flavor.
And then nice and refreshing from that ice. Go for one more bite.
Really creamy, rich coconut milk
All right, so it's my turn to try the cendol.
Get a nice big scoop of all those green noodles.
Oh wow. That's nice and refreshing.
And actually if you want to try this stall, very cheap. Only three ringgit for this bowl.
Finished off with our cendol dessert. That was nice and refreshing.
So now I think we're gonna take a little bit of a break before we head out for dinner tonight.
So for dinner tonight we are having one of my all-time favorite dishes in the entire world.
This is something that I dream about all the time,
and every time I come to Malaysia and make sure that I have it.
And that is this right here. This is called bak kut teh.
This is the Klang-style bak kut teh. So Klang is an area here in Malaysia and
bak kut teh is a medicinal broth
soup, filled with all kinds of different ingredients. So you can see there's some tofu skin in there.
There's some meatballs. There is bits of pork ribs, pork, mushrooms,
different type of mushrooms here, the enoki mushrooms, and some tofu.
And it just smells so ridiculously fragrant. My mouth is watering.
This is such a herbal and flavorful dish.
And then on the side over here, we have a yam rice.
So just rice that's been cooked with the yam, there's bits of yam in there.
And then some Chinese cruller, or youtiao
which is just kind of like deep fried dough
which you can dip into the bak kut teh to try it out.
So let's dig into this. This looks so good.
So I'm just gonna go in and try this broth by itself first. Just check that out. That is so rich-looking already.
So let me give this a try.
Oh, yeah.
Oh man, that is exactly how I remember it.
Super deep, rich flavors. So tons of Chinese medicinal herbs in there.
But also you could taste that really porky broth. It is just so creamy and rich.
Oh man, that is so good. Let me chase that with a little bit of the yam rice here.
That's got definitely, like a little bit of like a vegetable, almost yam sweetness to it.
So let me go in, try some of the ingredients in here.
I'm gonna go in for a piece of pork, and some needle mushrooms, get a little bit broth. Let's try that.
Oh.
That is so good. That pork was
seriously, ridiculously tender, and those needle mushrooms have a little bit of a crunch to them.
Everything is just saturated with the flavor of that broth. It's such a deep flavor.
So many Chinese flavors going on in there.
It's just what dreams are made of really.
I'm gonna grab some of these fried crullers, youtiao.
I'm just gonna dip that right in the broth. And this should do a really good job
soaking that flavor up.
Let's try that.
Oh, yeah, oh.
That is fresh youtiao.
It's a little bit salty, actually. I'm doing one more. Oh man.
That soaks up the flavor really really well.
So as I mentioned, this is the Klang-style of bak kut teh here in Penang.
There is a different style, it's a darker broth. Almost like a black broth.
But this is a little bit lighter and a little bit more of brown in color.
But this is seriously good. You guys should try out bak kut teh definitely anytime you're in Malaysia.
One of the joys of eating bak kut teh is the free
refills of the broth, and the broth is where all that flavor is coming from.
So we've already had a couple of refills. As you can see though, we've eaten pretty much everything in there.
There's justlittle bits of pork left. And I would drink it directly from this pot, but it's cooked in these clay pots
so it retains the heat pretty well, so it's still really hot. Just having a last little drops of our bak kut teh broth.
Oh, man.
Finished off with our bak kut teh. What did you think Sabrina?
Oh my gosh, that is like one of my all-time favorites.
Super super good. Snd this place is called Khoon Klang Bak Kut Teh.
This was not our first pick today, but the one that we wanted to go to was closed today.
So we ended up coming here and I was seriously not disappointed whatsoever. That was awesome.
So definitely try out Khoon Klang Bak Kut Teh if you're ever in Penang. And that is going to be it for today's episode.
I hope you guys enjoyed. We had another incredible day here in Malaysia of eating.
And if you haven't already, make sure to subscribe and hit that bell icon so you're notified when we post a video.
- And we'll see you again very soon. Bye bye. - Bye!