Eating with Senses Mingling
3 min read
When it comes to food and our ability to accept and enjoy it or to reject and discard it, humans actually rely on both Tongue and Nose to decide.
November 2025
This November, Penang Monthly explores language, place and memory. As GTLF returns, we highlight Penang’s multilingual streets and the dialects that keep local history alive.
The Echo That Splits Two Worlds
10 min read
This short story is the winning entry in Penang Monthly's Short Story Prize held in conjunction with George Town Literary Festival 2025.
Why I Still Cook When It Is So Easy Not To
11 min read
I often wonder why I subject myself to extensive labour when I could easily eat out. In Penang, food is everywhere—cheap, delicious, convenient, fast. Why spend hours chopping, stirring and cleaning when I could get a perfectly good meal for under RM10 outside?
Dried Fish: A Luxury Born of Necessity
4 min read
Ikan bulu ayam, gelama tengkerong and ikan gelama tiga gigi are fish species usually dried because they are too bony to be worth cooking. Salt, which gives dried fish its distinctive flavour, is used in abundance for its antibacterial properties.
Revisiting Challenges in Conserving George Town’s Heritage Buildings
5 min read
Implementing conservation standards and monitoring mechanisms to conserve George Town’s heritage buildings remain complex, even after 17 years since its UNESCO inscription in 2008.
Tracing the Taste of Thailand in Penang’s Kitchens
7 min read
Penang’s proximity to Kedah and the long history of cross-border marriages and trade brought Thai culinary traditions southward, introducing the intense, spicy-sour palate that still defines much of northern Malaysian food today.
A Penang Potpourri: How Indian Food Became Everyone’s Food
6 min read
Indian food in Penang reveals the history of those who brought it over and the openness of the people in its new home.
The Forest’s Table: Reviving Indigenous Knowledge for Malaysia’s Food Future
6 min read
Malaysia is home to one of the world’s richest rainforests, with an estimated 15,000 plant species. Out of these are more than 520 edible plant species, and 300 of these are indigenous to the country.
Of Private Archives and Public Histories
7 min read
If private collections govern our knowledge of the past, what histories are amplified and which remain obscured when they are exhibited publicly?
Bingley Sim and Ima Norbinsha’s “Now and Then 2”, presented by Galeri Puteh, addresses this poser through a lens of critical inquiry.
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The Southern Chinese Flavours that Built Penang’s Palate
6 min read
As a child, I spent a lot of time in this aunt’s house, and most of that time, in her kitchen. While my other aunts and cousins played mahjong in the background, I would sit at the kitchen table, annoying her with requests to help her cook.
The Wan Li Shipwreck: It’s Last 300kg of History
5 min read
In the space Rongen has curated over two decades, ceramic shards from the Wan Li shipwreck are arranged like relics. Some have been made into jewellery and others set onto small sculptural pieces. The rest remain untouched, displayed just as they were when they were lifted off the seabed.
The Murtabak: Techniques, Traditions and Regional Variations
8 min read
Penang murtabak is very elaborately prepared when compared to that from other parts of Southeast Asia. My findings are based on its traditional preparation at Hameediyah and the now-defunct Merah restaurants.
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