Penang Seafood Restaurant

A super decent assam laksa Penang style is found at Penang Seafood Restaurant. Its char kway teow and prawn noodles are fairly consistent too, along with a kick-ass sambal petai fried rice or simply stir-fried sambal petai. In fact, we’re not that fond of their other dishes in comparison to their one-dish options. It’s a zi char eatery, and also offers seafood.

There’s a public carpark opposite the restaurant, but it’s tough to get a slot in the evenings. The good thing is, Aljunied MRT station is right next to the street on Geylang Lorong 25A; it's a viable to leave our cars somewhere and take a straight train. Although this is the East-West line and can suck if you're planning to stay out after 10.30pm. We usually pop in after 8.45pm when the peak dinner crowd has thinned out, and there's a higher chance of getting a parking lot easily. What scares me is the entire row of fruit stalls in the area. OMG, the stench of durians. I cannot.

Their trio of eggs and spinach in superior broth is odd. Each time I forget and order this, I keep getting fibrous spinach. The soup stock is a fail; it isn’t the elegant Cantonese version I prefer. None of us like their pork either. After many visits, we’ve learnt not to order it- their ribs (in all three versions) tend to come fatty and kinda weirdly soft. The marinade and sauces aren’t something I appreciate either. Oddly, the sweet and sour pork seems fine so far. The standards for sambal belachan fluctuate like crazy though. Currently, it’s no good. We’ve been popping into this eatery-then-restaurant for almost a decade. When it expanded into its current mode that offers air-conditioning, and upped its prices, some things are still worth coming back for.

Its assam fish head is delicious. I'm not this giant fan of fish head curry, to be honest. So this is one version of fish head 'curry' that I enjoy. The kitchen use a snapper of sorts. It took me a while to realize that they use ang goli which is ikan ibu kerisi. I'm not good with Hokkien or Chinese names for fish. I learnt them in Malay as a kid and those are the ones that stuck through the decades.