Penang Hill

What do you do when you get a craving for Malaysian food? Of course, you indulge, giving the reason, it's once in a while. The last time I ate authentic Malaysian food was August 2007 (thanks to Tabs and Joan for bringing me around KL!) and I seriously needed a fix.

Of course, as with eating Malaysian-style, you gotta drag someone to eat with you. Gayle is the not-so-involuntary victim. :P Might as well have a dinner date too! LOL.

The place was Penang Hill, located in Midtown Mall (connected with Robinson's Plaza - Ermita).

Prepped up and ready to go.

She smiles.

He smiles.

Jay's terrorist shawl is pwnage.

Here comes the food!

I had a teh tarik. Gayle had boring iced tea.

Gayle's food. Nasi Goreng.

My food. Nasi Lemak.

Food analysis:
The teh tarik sucks. It was too sweet (in fact, EVERY drink in the Philippines is usually too sweet. I don't get why Filipinos feel the need to acquire diabetes earlier) and not enough of that trademark foam on top. I am guessing they don't know how to 'pull' the tea properly. For my non-Malaysian readers, teh tarik is literally 'pulled tea' and its unique taste and texture is achieved by 'pulling' the tea (one container above the other), causing the tea to fall from one container to another, mixing it. The higher the tea is pulled, the better it is, supposedly. The waiter kept correcting by calling it "tea tarik". I didn't give him any tip.

The nasi goreng was fantastic. Granted, it is a lot fancier than the typical pasar malam fried rice, but it was well worth it. It came with 3 big sticks of satay (skewered meat grilled on charcoal) and peanut sauce. The rice was spicy and after a while, Gayle couldn't handle it so we switched rice. Anyway, the serving was a LOT and the food was quite accurate. This one is on my recommend list.

The nasi lemak (literally, 'fat rice' because of its terrific calorie content) was absolutely superb. The only downside was that the sambal (spicy prawn paste) was not that spicy. I never had this with vegetables before, but the spicy kangkung tasted really good. The chicken curry with it was average. I believe that no chicken curry can ever come close to Aunty Joyce's (my other 'mum' from Miri). She makes killer curries. The nasi lemak came with ginger rice, another pleasant surprise. Very delicious, and I highly recommend it.

All in all, my Malaysian food excursion at Penang Hill turned out to be quite good. Moral of the story: Eat the food, schmuck the drinks. There's no way they can make teh tarik taste good if they have to call it tea tarik.