A taste of home

A familiar bowl of comfort, that is ‘kway chap’. — Photos: KYSPEAKS

Whenever I go back to Penang, there are always a few things to check off my list when it comes to hawker food. There’s the usual char kuey teow, Hokkien mee, laksa and kuey teow soup, but if you veer just slightly off the beaten path, there’s also kway chap, one of the hidden gems of Penang hawker food that’s equally delicious but super hard to find outside the island.

If you’re like me, then I have good news to share with you. The famed Kimberly Street kway chap now has a shop at Damansara Utama (Uptown) in Petaling Jaya as of late last year. Helmed by the son of the original stall in Penang that’s been in operation for some four decades, the name of the shop reads “Penang Kimberley Duck Kuih Chiap (Kuan Kee)”, but it also says Wei Kee Penang.

We also had Teochew Guang Chiang, a traditional beancurd roll that tastes like a cross between yam cake and radish cake with an addition of peanuts. A pretty interesting snack that I found myself enjoying very much.

The set-up is typical of most no-frill restaurants in the Klang Valley – air-conditioned, square tables, wooden chairs and a menu with limited mains besides a selection of side dishes to choose from.

We had the signature kway chap and pork leg rice for lunch, and ordered some side dishes to share.

The stewed duck may not look impressive here, but it was juicy, tender and absolutely delicious.

The kway chap is just as I remembered it to be in Penang, packed with all the good stuff such as duck meat, pork intestines, coagulated blood, hard-boiled egg, preserved vegetable, pork belly and more. The noodles are similar but not quite the same as kuey teow, although both are made from rice flour. Here, the kway is a lot smoother and softer, and served in bigger slabs.

Everything was cooked to perfection, tender and soft as with most Penang dishes, and you can easily eat this with a spoon as you would with chopsticks. The chili sauce is a good condiment to add if you like to have your food with a bit of kick as well.

The pork leg rice was similar to that which you would get from a Thai restaurant. The pork leg cut was properly fatty with the skin stewed to a texture that almost melts in your mouth!

We also had side dishes of preserved vegetable, coagulated blood and pork belly, all the usual ingredients that come with kway chap, as well as Teochew Guang Chiang.

We went there on a Sunday just past noon and there was already a crowd; service could be a bit better, but it sure beats having to drive four hours up to Georgetown to eat this.

Braised pork belly with the perfect ratio of skin, fat and meat.

KY Teoh has been trying to influence your food cravings since 2005. He was NTV7 Foodie Blogger 2014, R.A.GE Food Fight Judge 2015 and Versus 1001 Rasa Baba’s Guest Judge 2018. Read more about his food jaunts at KYspeaks.com