Penang Food Stories (Chapter 1) – Food hunting in Pengkalan Weld

In the past few months, we made a couple of food trips to Penang. The main objective was really to gorge ourselves silly, checking out food places recommended by friends as well as re-visiting old favourites. Of course not everything we ate was worth recommending to others, so I’ll just skip those not-so-good ones. In those many hours that we spent on the island (and also in the mainland), we must have worked ourselves through at least a hundred dishes/food items!

After driving for more than 3 hours from KL, starting out at about 8.00am, we reached Penang close to noon time. We met up with fellow foodie friend, Criz Lai and he asked if we would like to try some Pan Mee. Pan Mee? We have plenty of those in KL! But then Criz insisted that the Penang-style Pan Mee is very different from the KL version. As we were hungry as hell, we decided to go along with Criz’s suggestion.

So, he took us to this place – a shoplot located on the ground floor of the PDC Flats in Pengkalan Weld – which goes by the innocuous name “I Mum Mum”! Yep, every Malaysian-Chinese toddler would understand that phrase alright!

OK, so… let’s “Mum Mum”! The menu is simple … a laminated plastic sheet listing a few varieties of the Pan Mee in various widths – thin, broad or pinched… and then have it either “dry”, “soup”, “chilli” or “curry” style. The crowd favourite seemed to be Pan Mee with Fried Crispy Pork and that was also recommended by Criz.  So, we ordered 2 plates of that, one with thin pan mee and another with “pinched” pan mee. One bite into the pan mee and flavourful crispy fried pork and I could understand why almost every other diner there had ordered this! The pan mee was smooth and slithery and those slices of tender tasty pork were amazing. The strips of crunchy wood fungus gave it that added crunchy mouthfeel.

We also tried their Chilli Pan Mee which was served with minced pork, fried ikan bilis, pork balls and their fragrant chilli, of course.  We tossed everything together and squeezed a bit of lime over it… sublime!  I was so glad we went along with Criz’s idea to come here!  The soupy version was DL’s favourite and it had lots of crispy ikan bilis to whet his appetite.  We had to will ourselves not to order extra bowls as we knew we were going for more bites after that.

Yes, the Pan Mee here is definitely different from what we get in the Klang Valley – tastes, textures and ingredients may look the same but the difference can be felt once you take mouthfuls of these delicious noodles.

Prices at “I Mum Mum” are really decent, starting from RM3.00 to RM5.20 and you can opt for either the small or big portion.
I Mum Mum
No.294, PDC Flats
Pengkalan Weld
10300 Georgetown
Penang
Tel: 012-518-1827 (Carmen Choo)

*Simple map shown in above pic
Business hours: 7.00am to 3.00pm

 

Still in the vicinity of Pengkalan Weld, we followed our food guide and after a few turns in several narrow roads, we found ourselves in this “establishment” selling the freshest ever Lorbak! This place is like a homegrown little industry, a house-cum-business lot that produces freshly-made lorbak.

There are only 3 types of lorbak available but they are really the best 3 I have had. There are the rolled-up type with chopped meat inside, the flat cracker with shrimps on top and a tofu topped with shrimps.

As far as the tattered signboard says, the name is “Prawn Fritters” and please call that number on the board if you wish to find this place because we have no idea what the address is!

The place produces and supplies lorbak to other food outlets in Penang but they do entertain drop-in customers (like us!). Be prepared to stand around to munch on those crazily delicious lorbak as there’s no table or chair in sight. The foreign worker assistant will just snip up the freshly-fried lorbak and plonk them unceremoniously onto a metal plate and will also provide some chilli sauce if you ask. We started with a few pieces of the lorbak, then added on more and more because they were simply very good and so darn addictive.