Penang Food Crawl: New Cathay Coffee Shop

Last day in Penang, I went in search of a good breakfast before departing. I suddenly remembered this coffee shop that my nephew told me where they serve good koay chiap in the morning.

New Cathay Coffee Shop located on Jalan Burma intersected with Lorong Kuching, this coffee shop does a really brisk business in the morning. We had people breathing down literally on our back waiting for us to finish our meal to get a table!

Famous for few hawker dishes like curry mee, fried pancake, fish fillet fried beehoon and apoms, this place also has a lot of other yummy goodies like koay chiap, hokkien mee, fried hokkien mee, koay teow soup, lam mee, pan mee and the list goes on…

Considering my last few days chow down fare, I was pretty well behaved that morning. J I was considering ordering the curry mee till I saw the queue and decided to skip this round. Oh well, plenty of other food I haven’t tried in Penang so I ordered Prawn Mee, Fried Hokkien Char, Koay Chiap and Pan Mee.

Hokkien Mee or Penang style Prawn Mee was served after a few minutes of ordering. The noodles were good from the sweet prawn broth and its ingredients. Bits of sliced lean pork, small prawns, egg slices, accompanied the yellow noodles and beehoon topped with fried shallots and a spoon full of chili sauce on the side. Although the broth look a little diluted, the flavor was tasty and I can taste the prawns in the broth.

Duck Koay Chiap came and looked lovely and appetizing in the lightly colored broth. Different from the Kimberley Street Koay Chiap, this one has a light colored broth that was very flavorful as well. It has its own deliciousness that I like and there was the added fried garlic oil which enhanced the overall taste further. Supporting ingredients such as sliced fried tofu, quartered braised egg, sliced duck meat, some offal pieces, all topped with the smooth koay chiap noodles and chopped coriander. This is really beautiful as I drank up all the soup and its yummy ingredients. I will have to come back for this if I want to have this for breakfast!

Hokkien Char is Penang style fried noodles in a dark sauce. What makes a good Hokkien Char is the lard oil which some do not use anymore for health reason and a good sambal belachan.  This one here is pretty decent. Topped with fried shallots, prawns, pork and choy sum, the fried noodles and beehoon was savory and palatable. I love the sambal as it brought a good kick to the overall dish.

Pan Mee in clear broth was decent as well according to my mom. The homemade torn noodles were smooth and soft with a broth boiled from anchovies. Topped with fried minced pork, sliced mushrooms and black fungus, the pan mee was quite yummy. This was served with some cili padi, sambal belachan and soy sauce. No crispy anchovies as usual to top this noodle as mom don’t like it. Penangites seem to love sambal belachan in everything we eat!

I also caught the Egg Apom stall owner busy at work as there was a long queue. I skip this again as we were rushing to leave for other appointments before departing Penang. Save for next round lah…hehehe!

This apom has a crispy golden brown crust and a slightly soft middle and the best part is that it's cooked on hot charcoal stoves. Made from lots of egg and coconut milk, customers order these scrumptious thin pancakes or apoms by the dozens as one is simply not enough!

Recommended orders are Penang style Curry Mee, Duck Koay Chiap, Hokkien Prawn Mee, Fried Pancakes and Egg Apoms. Nice to have so many good hawker dishes all located under one roof….Thumbs up!

New Cathay Coffee Shop

Lorong Kucing off Jalan Burma
10350, Pulau Tikus, Penang

Business Hours: 7.30am till 3.00pm or sold out

(Closed on Sunday)