Penang, Malaysia - Teochew Favorites @ Goh Huat Seng Restaurant (吴发成菜馆)

[klyeoh]

I visited this restaurant last year, but didn't get round to write about until a recent discussion about Teochew/Chiuchow/Chaozhou food (潮州菜) on another thread. I'm using the term 'Teochew' here as it's the one used in Penang, where the Teochews are one of the largest dialect groups after the dominant Hokkiens. One important factor which contributed to the large Teochew community in Penang, like in Singapore (which is also predominantly Hokkien) is that the Teochew dialect (despite its Guangdong geographical location) is mutually intelligible with Hokkien, but very different from Cantonese.

Goh Huat Seng is one of Penang's oldest restaurants, and perhaps one of the top 2 Teochew restaurants in Penang (the other is the now-defunct Chuan Loke Hooi on MacAlister Road). Goh Huat Seng on Kimberley Street (also known in Penang as 'Swatow-Kay', meaning Swatow Street, as early Teochew immigrants settled on this street) is still extremely popular among Penangites, both Teochew and non-Teochew. I don't know how long Goh Huat Seng has been around, but I have faint memory of going there as a little boy back in the late-1960s with my parents during a holiday in Penang. My Dad's old British Royal Navy colleagues took us there then. The food was robust & rustic and nothing like I'd ever tasted in Singapore.

Last year, I was amazed to be back there again for the first time in decades and realised that the food we aad hat evening was almost as much the same as I'd remembered decades earlier:
- "Chim choe", crisp minced-pork & crab meat fritters wrapped in tofu sheets.
- 8-Treasure steamed vegetables which included salted mustard leaves, Napa cabbage, shitake mushrooms, dried oysters, Chinese black moss, etc.
- Oyster omelette.
- Fishball and seaweed soup.
- Teochew-style steamed garoupa fillets, with salted vegetables, tomatoes, ginger and sour plum.
- Braised sea-cucumber stuffed with minced pork.
Dessert was some incredible empanadas filled with sweetened yam paste.

Everything was hearty & delicious, if a bit robust - pretty reminiscent of the rustic country fare in rural Swatow.

Address details
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Goh Huat Seng Restaurant (吴发成菜馆)
59-A Kimberley Street
Georgetown
10100 Penang
Tel: [phone]

[Lau]

man this looks good...i really wish they had teochew food in the US, i only get to eat it when i come to asia

[penang_rojak]

My favourite Teochew restaurant nowadays is Goh Swee Kee in Sri Bahari Road, across from The Ship restaurant. Another good & very popular Teochew restaurant in Penang is Goh Teo Kee in Sungei Ara. I don't know why all the top Teochew restaurants in Penang happened to be owned by families with the surname Goh, which is more common among Hokkiens than Teochew.

[Lau]

need to make it to penang one day, the food always looks amazing and i hear such good things about it

[huiray]

Empanadas???

[klyeoh]

LOL! Pardon my description - for want of a better term, *that* was what came into my mind when I tasted those morsels: they were like those sweet Filipino empanadas with raisins & cream cheese filling.

The waiter said they were "orh nee", but the ones we have in S'pore were just bowls of mashed sweetened Asian purple yam, sometimes with lotus seeds, sweet potatoes, even sugar-cured mandarin orange, or glutinous rice in more elaborate versions. But I'd never had them enclosed in a pastry shell before :-)

Maybe when I retire - I'll move to live in Penang. Singapore's getting too expensive these days. I can imagine whole retirement villages full of Singaporeans in Penang in the near future.

[huiray]

Heh. I have a sneaking suspicion (probably wrong, though) that there may be a bit of crossover influence going on. I remember curry puffs from Indian bakeries being of that shape in M'sia years ago - filled with beef or chicken (sometimes mutton) thick curry "paste" with peas and potatoes, puff pastry packages with that same molded edge. They were wonderful, tasty, occasional treats - those we got anyway.

The meal looks delicious. Fish balls for you, I see.

[klyeoh]

Yech, the fishballs soup was the soup of the day & the only one available :-P

Ah yes, curry puffs - but the types I find in Penang are the beautiful Nyonya sort with spiral layered patterns on the pastries. They looked so fine & too beautiful to eat.

[huiray]

What about the Indian/Mamak pastry shops in Penang, if any?

[klyeoh]

Usually, I find samosas in Penang's Indian places, but maybe I haven't been spending that much time in Penang, nor really sussing out their full culinary choices. All my visits to Penang have been 3-4 day affairs, not enough time really to delve into that city's varied offerings.

[penang_rojak]

Actually, Goh Huat Seng used to serve the their oh-nee like the way you have it in Singapore. Then, one day, they made it into a "kalipop" (Chinese "karipap" or curry-puff) and all their customers including me liked it.

huiray, we have all kinds of curry puffs in Penang - Malay karipap, Nonya kalipop with curry filling but with a whole shrimp inside each of them and with the shrimp tail peeking out of one end of the kalipop (you dip the kalipop into Worcestershire sauce or what we in Penang call "ang moh tau eu" before eating), big Indian curry puffs which are served with pickled onions coloured pink, rectangle-shaped "ang moh" curry puff with real puff pastry, Japanese curry "puffs" with doughnut-like skin, little mini "currypuffs" filled with sweetened, crushed peanuts instead of "curry", etc.