Penang Malaysian Cuisine — Restaurant in Elk Grove Township

After reading through some of the other reviews, I noticed that only a very small handful of people ordered Malaysian food. I don’t know why people come to a Malaysian restaurant just to order some Chinese and Thai dishes that you can find closer to home. There are only several places in Illinois that specialize in Malaysian cuisine. I encourage people that read my review to come here and try some of the signature dishes. We just came back from Penang, Malaysia a month ago and wanted to introduce a friend to the cuisine. Overall, this is a 4 out of 5. If the service was better it could be a 4.5. Prices I suppose were slightly expensive since it’s a specialty. Portion sizes were ample for the b three of us.

We ordered roti canai, char kway teow duck egg, Penang har mee, curry laksa, Hainanese chicken ½, Panang curry with shrimp, cendol, coconut pudding, and teh tarik. Service was okay. It did take awhile to signal one of the servers to come to us, so that they could take our order. For some reason, they were always short on something (one bowl/spoon, one glass of water, one takeout box, etc). There were three of us but they never gave us the correct amount of utensils.

-roti canai 5 - very tasty. Flatbread was flaky and soft. Easy to pull apart, but sturdy enough to hold the chicken and potato with the sauce. -char kway teow duck egg 5 - staple in Malaysian cuisine. Noodles had the right amount of chew and there was a good balance of seafood and noodles. -Penang har mee 4 - I gave it a 4 because it’s not as delicious as the one in Penang but this is still very good. The noodles here are not as chewy and the broth is not as addicting. Still, the noodles and meat are very good. Broth has a small kick to it but it has a very shrimpy taste. Just a note but the shrimp in every dish is huge. -curry laksa 5 - I really enjoyed this dish. If you run out of noodles, add some of that white rice to it. Not really spicy. Milk texture due to the coconut milk. -Hainanese chicken 4 - this is pretty good for being in Illinois but nowhere as good as in Singapore. The chicken isn’t as tender and juicy. This version is still tender and is recommended to eat. Like I said, it’s not something you can get everywhere. The rice that comes with it is delicious. No, it's not just regular white rice. -Panang curry with shrimp 5 - the sauce has a sweeter taste to it, different from the savory dishes we had. They gave a generous amount of shrimp. -cendol 4 - this version is more watery than the Penang version. In Penang, it’s thicker and milkier. This is still a good dessert to have after a heavy meal. -coconut pudding 5 - $13 is a bit steep so you better finish all of it. There is some coconut meat that you can eat as well. -teh tarik - 4 - light drink. We had the iced and hot. The hot version has a...

This was our second visit to Penang, one of the few Malaysian restaurants in the Chicago area. We visited with our Malay friend again, and he guided us through the menu, adding commentary and observations. We ordered a traditional Malaysian dish, Nasi Kemal, which was a roasted chicken thigh and leg, covered with a spicy (not too hot) sauce. The chicken came with a cup of white rice, a hard-cooked egg, a spoonful of Malaysian anchovies, peanuts and sliced cucumber. The anchovies were bland and nothing like the salty, briny Italian variety (which we love). Our Malay guide told us that in Malaysia, this dish would come without the chicken and with much more sauce and anchovies and rice. The challenge for eating this chicken dish was that it was served on a triangular plate, which made cutting the meat from the bones very awkward. I was worried that with one slip of the knife, the thigh would shoot off of the plate, skittering across the table and onto another plate or onto the floor. Fortunately, "chicken run" did not occur and we enjoyed the crispy skin and spicy sauce. We also ordered Ginger Chicken, which was made without the ginger wine (at our request). The sauce was rich and had a delightful ginger flavor, probably due to the thick slices of ginger root that came with the chunks of chicken. We had wanted to order the Hainanese half chicken ($19.95), but the dour waitress said we wouldn't like it because it came with "bone in, skin on." She actually wouldn't let us order this dish and recommended sweet and sour chicken instead. We were glad we ordered the ginger chicken, but we still think we would have enjoyed the Hainanese chicken. Our Malay friend thought we would also, and he argued with the waitress a bit, but we relented.

Overall, the food this visit was appetizing but not as well prepared as it was on our first visit. Our friend ordered chicken satay and was surprised it was not crispy. He was also disappointed with the chicken Murtabak and the Mee Goreng he ordered.

The dining room was busy on a Sunday night, so maybe we should have ordered different appetizers.

We'll probably try Penang again, and next time we'll order the Hainanese...

My family had been looking forward to dining at Penang with a Malay friend. When we all visited Penang recently, we were all excited to sample this Asian cuisine. He had dined there a number of times before and so he made recommendations about which dishes to order. We started with a couple of appetizers: satay chicken (six skewers), $12.95, and chicken murtabak, $9.95. The murtabak was paratha (Indian flat bread) stuffed with ground chicken, onion, cucumber and eggs. This dish was very tasty and unusual. The satay was moist but otherwise not much different from the Thai chicken satay we've sampled at Thai restaurants. Our entrees included: mee goring (chicken with lo mein noodles), $13.95; beef rendang (beef chunks in a rich, spicy sauce), $19.95; Penang spicy chicken (stir-fried with vegetables), $15.95. All three of these dishes were freshly cooked, spicy and tasty. I'm not sure why the beef dish was so expensive. This dish was also the spiciest of the three we sampled. A couple of us also sampled the teh tarik (Malaysian style hot tea, mixed with condensed milk), served in paper to-go cups with plastic lids. When asked why the hot tea was served this way, our waitperson replied, "We don't have regular (ceramic) tea cups." We sampled a dessert of pulut hitam, cold rice with coconut milk. The rice had been pureed and so this was more like a cold coconut soup. The restaurant is unprepossessing, a polite way of saying it is nondescript and without much atmosphere. The food is well prepared, fresh, and, according to our Malay friend, authentic (with the exception of the dessert, which should have been more like rice pudding than soup). The pricing of certain dishes was curious because the beef dish was not larger than either of the chicken dishes. The satay offered just six skewers and the other appetizer also offered six pieces. Our friend told us that Malaysian cuisine is a blend of Chinese, Indian and Malay cooking. At Penang, this combination can be satisfying, if...