I Know Why Penang Food Is So Amazing…

By Ooi Kee Beng, Penang Monthly Editorial, December 2024.

BORN WITHOUT ANY spoon of any metal in my mouth, food was a matter of having enough to dispel any passing pang of hunger.

Often, it was the drink—plain water or coffee—and not the food that helped. It did not matter how. In any case, lucky were we who were—and are— born and raised in Penang. That food could lack flavour and taste was not an idea we needed to consider very often, be it home-cooked, street-bought or canteen-served.

The nutritional content of what we ate was not something we cared much about. Looking back, well-spiced carbohydrates was what we took most of the time. That must be because Penang people relied on what the port took in. Life was hard, but work could be found. We had to be “innovative”, to use a 21st-century term.

But for most of us, we had to be “resilient”, again using a contemporary word. And to be resilient meant that we didn’t mind getting by on the bare minimum in nutrition, but we needed our food to be tasty, spicy and flavourful.

Living On Spices

That was the deal. Low nutrition was fine, but whatever we ate or drank had to taste good.

I suspect that to be the dynamic that guaranteed the high tastiness of all that made a “Penang dish”.

While much of the population in Penang may have been poor, staying poor required something paradisical to keep us going. We were resilient because there was always a lovely meal between periods of hard work to look forward to.

And to be resilient over time, that became the uncompromising value of the people of Penang. Our food must be exceptional. And this high demand from the consumers of Penang was what taught the supply side—the hawker, the Nasi Rendang guy, the Nasi Lemak cook, and the maker of the hybrid cuisines—that his customers, however poor they may be, do not tolerate bad cooking. The right to a good meal is the human right of the Penangite.

Our island identity depends on this. Our human dignity depends on this. And our daily civility thrives on this. In fact, what precious information would we disseminate among ourselves if not to tell our closest relatives or newest friends where they can go to get “the best” Char Koay Teow, Mee Goreng, Satay Daging or Cendol? Penang being a small place, it is also a human right to not have to travel far to experience “the best” of anything on offer, and so such places became abundant and ubiquitous.

Therefore, when international judges of food establishments—be this Michelin or Zagat or Tripadvisor—enter the fray and start ranking Penang dishes and restaurants, we see it as an intrusion. Who are they to tell us what’s best here on our own streets?

Was it not us, we people of Penang, who organically and through natural selection (well, social natural selection), skilled by poverty, who developed an urban mechanism that could evolve into countless dishes fit for kings, affordable for paupers, acceptable to all communities?

Can tongues used to silver spoons taste the historical human depths (of anguish and hope, and resilience and elation) from which Penang dishes sprang? 

Probably not.

How Penang food will evolve as its port workers become factory workers, and Penang’s young know less about the threats of hunger and thirst than they do about dishes being “too carb-heavy” and drinks being too sweet, remains to be seen.

All things change, even Penang food. But the driver of change in this case is sociological. It comes from within Penang society itself. As the standards on the demand side drop, the need for high standards on the supply side also drop.

The less we have to suffer, the less we need to innovate. This is true for cuisines, culture or creativity. Resilience is a virtue born of sustained suffering. Amazingly good things can come out of it.