Nyonya food at Pulau Tikus

On the Food Trail with Tiberius Kerk

ANY long-time resident of Penang will tell you that one of those places worth visiting on a return trip to the island is Pulau Tikus.
The morning market at this place still retains all the flavours of old Penang. Some of the food sold and eaten here remind those of us who have come of age (a long time ago) that some things are best
savoured at their original sites.

Naturally, when an ex-Penangite shows up at Pulau Tikus, he tends to arrive at about 10-11am. Not exactly the right time because the housewives were already there at 8.30am.

Breakfast means a bowl of hokkien prawn mee inside the market at the food court. Or, perhaps just a plate of fried beehoon or plain chee cheong fun, Penang-style. That means none of those concoctions you find in KL.

Penang chee cheong fun is best with some local sweet sauce, chilli sauce, oil and a handful of fried onion rings. The locals swear that it surpasses those fusion chee cheong fun outside the state.
It is a unique feature of this market that there’s a stall selling nyonya dishes that our grandmothers and mothers used to cook for us.

This includes the dry sambal mixed with shrimps, acar with all the right ingredients, curry chicken with special nyonya flavours and “perut ikan”.

The last dish is rapidly fading from the nyonya menu these days, simply because it involves too much work. The hawkers will tell you that the returns are low, and perut ikan is unfamiliar to many members of the younger generation.

Below market price

Fortunately at Penang’s Pulau Tikus market, it still exists and thrives. Some of us who have sampled the dish (perut ikan) will tell you with tears in our eyes that it reminds us of our mothers.

Perhaps that is why so many ex-Penangites rush back to their beloved island the first chance they get. Where else but Penang, you can get a bowl of steaming hot hokkien prawn mee for RM2.50.

And if you are a hardcore and very frugal person, you will head towards Jelutong and find a stall selling hokkien prawn mee for RM2.

It is said that Penang people are so stingy that they won’t pay more than RM2.50 for “ordinary” hawker food.

In fact, if they can get it for RM1.80, they will drive five miles to find that crazy hawker who sells his dishes at below market price.

Another seasonal local dessert is the “koay ee” (glutinous rice balls). Luckily for us, when we were there, this woman who was selling all our favourite nyonya dishes was also selling the glutinous rice balls.

Opposite her stall was another woman who specialised in ordinary dishes that were of great help to the local housewives who found it quite a chore to cook up more than three dishes on a daily basis.

Fried kembong, various types of veggies and some unsophisticated curry dishes will complete any meal at any Chinese home on the island.

Right eating places
Frankly there’s no shortage of good food in and around the Pulau Tikus market. Just a hop, skip and jump away there are two corner coffeeshops that are filled to the brim every morning.

I will happily vouch for the above par hawker food sold in either coffeeshop. It is not coincidental that the residential homes in Pulau Tikus are highly priced.

Great food and that includes mamak mee goreng, mee rebus, roti canai and with the seafront (Gurney Drive) nearby, Pulau Tikus is a favourite pit-stop for many visitors to the Pearl of the Orient.

I normally have my second breakfast at the market on my annual pilgrimage to the island. Anybody who knows Penang won’t go hungry if he knows all the right eating places.

Mornings at Pulau Tikus easily take up two or three hours. The food portions on the island are not big, neither are their prices. That’s the way, it should be.

A visitor to Penang eats little but often. The challenge is how to squeeze as many variety of hawker food in a single day and night as well.