Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Dish

Shoot, maybe we should have ordered that instead! (Click four arrows to enlarge to full screen.)

I suppose we've all, at some point in our respective dining-out histories, suffered from food envy, that nagging feeling that your neighbors ordered more skillfully than you did.

But until Dave showed me this sequence of photos I was under the impression that only we were uncouth enough to crane our necks after a server delivering a particularly tempting plate of food to a nearby table.

The dish in question is this, a beautiful silver pomfret 'Teochew style' -- steamed with tomatoes, black mushrooms, shredded pickled mustard, sour plums, and a few paper-thin slices of three-story pork, and served garnished with cilantro leaves and slivered scallion.

It's a dish we've eaten elsewhere, but never enjoyed as much as we did the full-on tart version lovingly prepared at Teik Seng in George Town, Penang. It epitomizes, we think, the restaurant's approach to every dish it serves: top-notch ingredients, no holds barred when it comes to flavorings.

(That bacon candy was, by the way, siew yoke or roasted pork, not barbecued pork as we'd thought. We continue to wonder how Teik Seng coaxed chewy stickiness from the dish, so different in taste and texture from another version served at a restaurant two blocks over.)

The morning of the day that we ate that fish we found the uncle who busses tables and delivers drinks at Teik Seng seated there behind a pile of French beans, carefully snipping the notched end off of each one. A few hours later we enjoyed those beans (they aren't on the menu; it pays to ask about specials before you order) stir-fried with garlic, minced and chopped pork (just a little bit of each, more for flavor than for protein), tiny dried shrimp, and a few fresh prawns. The crunch of the beans contrasted with the chew of the miniature crustaceans, while the freshness of crisp-tender beans balanced the meat's fat.

On other occasions we've enjoyed Teik Seng's prawns cooked with tamarind, candied and caramelized in spots but still strikingly sour, just the way we like them (I eat them heads, shells, and all);

ethereally light, nearly greaseless deep-fried squid, tender slices wrapped in crackly-crunchy cloaks;

and a mixture of seafood (the generically named 'sea bass', fish maw, crab, prawns, squid) stewed in a claypot, redolent of huatiao jiu (Chinese sweet 'yellow' rice wine) and juices seeped from the seafood.

Teik Seng's preparations -- such as this asam fish ('fish curry' on the menu, but it's your classic Penang-style spicy and tamarind-soured fish stew with tomatoes and okra; we love the gravy that's thick with bits of lemongrass and chili-hot enough to make us break out in a sweat)

and these potato leaves stir-fried with sambal belacan (chili sauce made with belacan, or shrimp paste) and plump, briny prawns

are not always pretty, but they do always leave us almost deliriously happy.

Until, that is, we get a look at what the folks at the next table are eating.

Kedai Makanan Teik Seng, Carnavon Street between Chulia and Campbell, George Town, Penang. 12 noon-2:30p and 5:30-8:30p. Closed on Tuesdays.

Comments

[Kavey]

I have food envy all the time and am often straining my neck to see the dishes being served and enjoyed by fellow diners!!!

And when eating a non-shared dishes cuisine, the envy I have for the plates some of my own party have ordered can be extreme!

Luckily, we usually go out with friends who like to share round tastes!

[Pete]

Looks absolutely yummy - I love assam fish! Okay, am jumping on the plane to Penang next weekend :-)

[Robert danhi]

I miss Penang, top 5 food cities in the world for sure!

[J2Kfm]

scrumptious stuff. this is the type of outlets that only the locals would know of.
not the over-hyped Gurney Drive stature for sure.

[C.S.]

"Three-story pork"? That's a good one!! It always tickles my funny bone to see foods/cuts of meats that I only know in Hokkien or Cantonese translated into English! It has that quaint, exotic quality about it, as opposed to just being plain ol' three-story pork that one eats all the time!!

[morgana]

The dishes you have described have made me deliriously hungry and envious. Time to get back to Georgetown.

[550ml jar of faith @minchow]

I grew up with a father who had no qualms about peering over shoulders of random strangers to scrutinize their food, and then hastily change or add on to orders. I cringed when he did it but now I find it rather endearing; no opportunities to eat well go missed!

[Victor]

Another great post, Robyn. The cooking style is definitely homecook. The prawn dish looks like how my mum would cook. In Hokkien, it is called "Asam Heh" - a typical Nyonya dish.

[mycookinghut]

This is just brilliant! I have long missed this kind of food! So jealous!

[Wee Chuan]

Robyn, If you looking for a nice Teochew steamed fish, check this,

http://kampungboycitygal.com/2009/05/restoran-baby-seafood-batu-buruk-klang/

It is very near my house @ Klang & the fish is placed on top of a charcoal stove with a big bowl of soup to continuosly top-up to avoid drying up.

[Rasa Malaysia]

Robyn - you are killing me with this post. I practically started drooling at the shot of asam prawn and then the gulai tumis fish! All the dishes look really good and looks like the real stuff. I am not sure if I eat there because I don't remember the name of the shop but location instead. This looks like it's much better than Sin Kheang Aun, I can tell from the pictures! Your verdict?

[Rasa Malaysia]

Oh, I think I saw some bunga kantan bits floating in the gulai tumis fish, right? I miss bunga kantan. :(

[eastingfeasting]

this is why i visit this blog often, real food education.

[rokh]

i must find some bacon candy in Klang Valley!

[Brad]

You eat the shells of the shrimp? GAG!
Very nifty site you have here..