Bak Chang A1 Mobile Van @ next to 7th Day Adventist Church

With the Dumpling Festival around the corner,I get sudden hankerings to enjoy these remarkable offerings.
Although I do have my favourite places,most of the bak chang sold in Penang itself are pretty acceptable except for this place in my opinion.
But if you ask most Penangites they will proudly herd you here,in a split second and force this down your throat like most well meaning Malaysian hosts.

Have tried the bak chang at many places before but I always avoid this van converted into a mobile foodstall.
Unless that is,that dear aunt of mine decides to bring their darned $6 dumpling(she loves me so much she has to get me the biggest size!) as a gift when she comes a house visiting.
Not wanting to dissapoint her I disappear into the kitchen to hide my heaving shoulders as I unwrap the most clumsily wrapped dumpling on the face of earth.

Just why is this is the most famous bak chang stall in Penang?

I'll tell you their 2 secrets.

1.Sugar (so much it defies logic,therefore I think they must have added Equal sweetener as well)
2.Extremely generous amounts of fresh stewed pork,chestnuts,salted egg.

Their owners discovered this secret a long long time ago.
Add a ton of sugar into the glutinous rice,mask it with a tinge of salt,good quality pepper and 99% of Penangites are sold.
Yea it's that easy to sell us winning foods here.
Quite the opposite of the government's "Kurangkan Gula" campaign.
Do that here and you loose your customers.
Seriously.

Which is why when Penangites go anywhere throughout the whole of Malaysia they bitch about the food in other states.
In order to momentarily solve your problem whether you are in KL or JB just carry a canister of syrup(preferably made from rock sugar) with you.
Add two tablespoons to your single plate of hokkein mee,curry mee and mix,mix,mix while it's hot.Mask it with deep fried onions(this is only for hokkein mee) and a little sweet soya sauce.Walla...you get a whiff of home.For fish curry just buy from the mamak stall,add mint leaves and one tablespoon of your home made rock sugar syrup concoction.When it comes to CKT (stress that you want it kurang,kurang,kurang eu/minyak)sprinkle the syrup via a shaker,mix while still steaming hot.
What we don't see,we don't care to know.
Who cares how much sugar the hawkers put into our foods as long as we didn't see with our own eyes?
Not me.Cos I do care since a dental appointment is astronomically challenging,billwise.

As I was saying earlier,the dumplings here are very clumsily wrapped.
There is an art to dumpling wrapping but the heir apparent who has taken over his Ah Sook's glorious money making empire,either doesn't care or has employed a fed up,overtaxed,abused and tired robotic Bangla to do the job like a one or two man factory hand.
That this stall makes so much moolah ($$$$money) it enables their entire clan to indulge in a couple of weeks long holiday overseas every year is beside the point.
We made them this rich just based on them exploiting our insane sugar craving.

Why on earth do we Penangites consume so much sugar in our foods and (not to mention deep fried pork lard/santan)in our diet yet think that,that, is what makes a good dish without recognising the unhealthy amount present in our diet?
Then in the next breathe walk the entire length of Gurney Drive (4 laps is a minimum,nuts!)because of the guilt factor we harbour after eating all that no,no,bad foods until the day we end up there in our 60s after a stroke disables half of our face or using walking aids into restaurants to scare the shit out of the next generation of kids.

Before I end allow me to add that I absolutely hate the mushrooms encased inside this A1 bak chang cos it has somehow managed to absorb some really icky smells from the lard.Ugh!
But in order not to cause my dear aunt heartache,I swallow the damn slimy smelly thing.Someday I will have to own up to this and break her heart when I tell her the hard truth,but in the meantime this coward most times dumps 3 quarters of the uneaten chang at the back of the fridge(I assure her I will have it for dinner/supper later).Oh the lies one has to tell when offline.
Maybe after I loose all my teeth I will have this to mutter to myself
"Hauch gum ai ditchen hafch zer nerf do sell hersh hwen ai hadtch zher chans.Hauch gum?hauch gum?"

In short eating the bak chang here is like slowly taking in a mouthful of condensed milk to coat your gums,followed by massaging your teeth with a blackforest cake to create new cavities* and finally topping it with sticky caramel made from glutinous rice and soya sauce pork belly stew to drill the nail into the coffin.

Even the flouride in your toothpaste cannot save your soul after this experience.

* Americans and Aussies might love this

Continental Bakery @ Nagore Road

Update September 2011:

The charlotte was no where to be seen.
In her place is a Dracula hairsprayed short sourpuss and her tall Olive Oyl sidekick who are sadly afflicted with the just cannot smile disease.
Their foreign worker staff are much nicer in contrast to this duo.
You should know that this bakery is almost totally reliant on old repeat customers who have a greedy look etched on their tired faces as they clutch their purchases and hurriedly trot out to their illegally parked vehicles.
Every confection used here is STILL extremely sweet (such a contradiction to the supposed to be healthy breads they sell)and so is everything else on the gum rotting menu.....the secret that makes it such a hit with the islanders and our dental practitioners a very happy bunch indeed.

80 percent of the original restaurants of the failed f&b spurt in theNagore road vicinity have come to closure.
Fast forward to today,an exciting slew of newcomers that'll give them a run for their money are...

1. Ritz from Tanjong Tokong (can't see how they can unseat Continental since the name sounds classier than their cakes that taste of everything that was in the fridge),
2. Si Tigun across the road directly opposite them(a no air cond pricier snack stop)
3. and a handful of new snack cantinas popping up down the road where all the old businesses have miserably failed to attract diners.

It'll be interesting to note how Continental withstands the competition and onslaught.Just above the cash register a couple of mythical feng shui creatures get ready to counter Si Tigun.

Looking forward to see this entire street transform into a bakers heaven.It'd be great won't it?No more having to come here,play by their rules and be forced to make our purchases before dusk.

------------------------------------------------------------------
This is possibly the most expensive bakery in Penang.
Housed in a very retro blast from the 70s corner shoplot with minimal(read pathetic) seating space,they boast of good business where many have crumbled.
Their best seller is a sweet cinnamon roll that costs close to $1.50 for ONE 8cm x 8cm x 9cm bun which I find way too sweet.It's like a cross between a sugary raisin fruitcake and a soft layered sponge that Spidey could get entangled in.
Anyway,anything sold behind the glass counter costs a bomb (from pastas,soups,pizzas etc)compared to the breads on the open shelves.I figure it's mostly due to the local girl hooks an angmo trophy factor.
Yea,I know it's a no brainer but that's just what it is.Every time a local lady and her angmo hubby open a hawker stall/shop/restaurant,they think they have the right to overcharge us customers based on their union alone.In short this bakery became famous at a time when we Malaysians were still mired in the opinion that everything foreign meant high quality and great compared to little inferior us.That the 'farang' hubby would bake a bread that could fly us to europe in a bite.(upturned eyes)

Ladies do watch your men here as the shortest pretty lady at the cash register will shamelessly flirt with any(ugly or handsome) and every(black,yellow especially white) man wearing pants regardless of whether he's young or dying.
She'll blatantly ask them to take her out for a movie even if he looks like a toad.
I don't know how successful she is in getting a date,never cared to ask,never want to know except if my man was about to be seduced by this charlotte.
Even if  I were to show her my fangs and claws I don't think she would back off.
That desperate she is.

Kedai Kopi Ho Ping (Beef Noodles) @ Kampung Malabar

So you've tried the old man's beef noodles just after the bridge outside the ferry terminal at Weld Quay,plus you have also tried most of his relatives and offsprings version of the noodles around Penang island,then you hear about this place,about how good it is and you think it is going to be almost the same standard fare.Think again.
This stall serves beef au naturale with close to zero salt.You will be having ajinomotoless soup,with tasteless beef balls and offal soup.But aaah,wait...they have a secret recipe that will give you sweet dreams just raving about it.
Your steaming bowl arrives and you take a squishy bite of the beef balls.It spews out sugary water.You wash it down with the soup and you end up releasing a torrent of the Chuping sugarcane farm produce into your system.You chew on the beef offal...it is a tasteless affair with liquidated granules that ants love,on the side to keep you looking like a sweet young thing.
If you don't like this much sugar in your dish like me,I betcha you will walk out looking like Shrek.

Chee Cheong Chook porridge @ New Lane Hawker Street (night)

1. This is another strictly Penangite stall.Therefore is an acquired taste

2.Most porridge is either bland,tasteless or ajinomoto laden this one is special case ...full of SUGAR! I think they even put EQUAL sweetener inside.

3. I tried very hard to finish but i gave up in the end cos I not want diabetes