After our little adventure at Wonderfood Museum, we headed towards Campbell Street to try out Malaysia’s oldest nasi kandar place, Hameediyah Restaurant. Nasi kandar, which originated from Penang, is basically the Tamil-Muslim version of ‘mixed rice’ or ‘curry rice’. That is, white rice served with various curries and side dishes.
In one of my previous trips to Penang, I had the chance to try out nasi kandar for the first time at Line Clear Nasi Kandar @ Jalan Penang. It was simply mind-blowing. Don’t ever leave Penang without trying nasi kandar!
Hameediyah Restaurant – More than a century old
Hameediyah Restaurant was established in 1907, which makes it 115 years old today. I was really looking forward to having nasi kandar here because of its long history. Honestly, how many food establishments can survive that many years these days? There must be something really special about their nasi kandar. Century old recipes!
When we arrived, there was a pretty long queue but it moved quickly. We couldn’t quite communicate with the staff because they didn’t speak English and we don’t understand Malay. Hence we could only order what we wanted by pointing here and there without knowing the names of the various dishes or curries. Didn’t want to hold up the queue too.
Look at the menu first before you order if it’s your first time here!
There is a menu/price list on the wall so you can get an idea of how much the dishes cost. The nasi kandar here isn’t cheap. Be prepared to pay between RM10-50 for a piece of curry prawn or fried prawn or RM8-50 for a piece of curry squid depending on the size. So don’t happily pick out seafood items that are huge in size because your bill will turn out shockingly HUGE too, lol.
Besides nasi kandar, Hameediyah Restaurant also serves biryani, goreng-goreng, murtabak, roti and more.
Dining area is in a different location
After we got our plate of nasi kandar, we were directed to their other outlet that was a few doors away. Airconditioned environment for dining-in. Someone would come by your table to take your order for drinks.
This was what we got to share. If I remembered correctly, we paid close to RM35 for this plate and 2 drinks. For the ingredients, we had chicken, braised squid and fried squid. They also gave some blanched okra. And we helped ourselves to the sliced cucumbers and onions that were placed on the side.
Thought the squids would be chewy but they weren’t. Tasted not bad. The sauce that was doused over the rice was quite flavoursome but overall it was lacking in something. There wasn’t a special concoction or combination of sauces that would add that extra punch and flavour.
Fried chicken was dry and tasted ordinary. The okra was just bland – definitely needed some sort of sauce or sambal chilli.
Final Thoughts
All in all, we didn’t think the nasi kandar here was that spectacular. Probably a little overrated and overpriced. Still prefer the nasi kandar at Line Clear and Deen Maju. Both places charge more reasonably too. However, as this is Penang’s oldest nasi kandar restaurant with a long history, I guess it’s still worth a visit. For those trying nasi kandar for the first time, maybe come here first before going to others so you won’t have a high benchmark, lol.
10.00am to 1.00pm, 3.00pm to 10.00pm Fri