Seven amazing street food dishes to eat in Penang, Malaysia

A bumping Chulia Street in Georgetown led us to some excellent wan tan mee from a stall manned by a very busy husband and wife team. It’s a noodle dish served with dumplings made from a mix of minced pork and prawns, wrapped in a wonton skin.

You can have it dry where the noodles are tossed in just the right amount of thick soy sauce, light soy sauce and lard oil. In this version, a bowl of soup with the dumplings in accompanies it, but you could have it all in the broth, too. Eat this with the pickled green chillies soaked in light soy you’ll find on the tables.

A Penang staple from the Indian Muslim community, this is a pastry-like buttery flatbread that’s flung and twirled until it’s paper thin. It’s then folded into a circle, fried until crisp and slightly charred, and served with dhal or lentil curry and onion pickles, or you can get a sweet version with sugar.

Other toppings are available, like sardines, cheese, onions or bananas, but the locals tend to keep it classic. It’s around 20p for one portion – expect to get a few.

This is arguably Penang's most famous street food, and it’s the favourite thing I ate during my time there. It’s a savoury umami dream. Flat rice noodles are stir-fried with shrimp, cockles, Chinese sausage, eggs, beansprouts and chives in a mix of soy sauce. There's a great charred flavour derived from stir-frying the noodles over a very high heat in a well-seasoned wok, along with the strong fragrance from the sauteed ingredients and the sweetness of the prawns.

Penang's signature dish, this is a spicy and sour bowl of glory. Thick round rice noodles hide beneath a hot, slightly sweet, dark brown-orange broth made tart by assam (sour tamarind) and thick with poached and disintegrated fresh mackerel fillets. It’s flavoured with lemongrass, cucumber, onions, pineapple, mint leaves and ginger, and is served with a spoonful of thick, sweet and salty shrimp paste, which you can mix into your bowl to taste.

This is another classic local dish from the Indian Muslim community. You select your curries from what's available that day, they're piled on top of rice, then splashes of various gravies are added.

They'll be served alongside some vegetables, often cabbage fried with turmeric or long beans. Pictured here is a combination of terrific beef, chicken and mutton curries. You’ll also often find squid curry and fish egg curry, which are equally popular.

This is another spicy soup, this time with both egg and rice noodles in a thick stock made from prawn, dried shrimp, pork ribs or chicken. It's usually garnished with slices of boiled egg, fried shrimp, thin slices of lean pork and sprinkled with crispy fried shallots, as well as a spoonful of chilli paste. Some vendors add crunchy golden cubes of fried lard to jazz up their bowl.

This may well look like an alien dish, but it’s fantastic. Cendol is a sweet made from shaved ice (literally ice shaved from a big block) in a coconut milk and palm sugar syrup, with starchy rice noodles (the cendol) made green from pandan leaves and kidney beans. It’s aromatic, inordinately refreshing and hugely popular with both locals and tourists alike.