Y’all could probably
tell that I’m at foodie from most my blog post if you’re an avid reader. Of
course, as a professional foodie with agile taste buds, I could not have
possibly missed the Penang International Food Festival (PIFF 2018).
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| they give out free booklet throughout the 3 weeks of PIFF which I loveee because you get to see all the itinerary and schedule! |
About Penang International
Food Festival 2018
The PIFF is organised by TLM Event, endorsed
by the Penang state government and supported by the Penang Island City
Council, Seberang Prai Municipal Council and Penang Global Tourism (StarOnline, 2018). Back
with more, the Penang International Food Festival (PIFF) returns this year with
16 days of mouth-watering food and drink. Penang’s street food has received
acclaimed and numerous awards over the years. Last year’s inaugural PIFF
successfully showcased Penang’s food offerings. This year, the 16-day event
will demonstrate Penang’s street food, as well as the food scene at cafes,
restaurants and hotels. For the very first time in Malaysia, there will be a
food truck invasion at Penang’s mainland, where 150 food trucks will come
together serving at one place. In addition to the three major events happening
over three weekends, there will also be a series of mini festivals and themed
dining experiences.
For the first two weekends, odds were against me because
my family was busy. Alas, the last week of
PIFF was here, and I convinced my family to attend the event! The irony was, I
didn’t manage to go to the other two events on Penang island but travelled all
the way to mainland for the Food Truck Invasion. Bravo! One of the reasons I insisted on going to FTI was because of
the historical significance that they have just achieve. The FTI event
attempted to be the record holder of the GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS for the “largest food truck rally” at a single
event. The previous holder of this record is by Japan two years ago, where they
had 123 food trucks at Saitama.
You might think that it’s
easy – they just need to surpass the number of food trucks at Japan, right? Not
at all. As a matter of fact, the evaluation and judging process was tedious.
Each of the food truck has to be distinctive and unique in their own (for
example, if there are two food trucks that sell similar food items, one of them
will be disqualified). After the process of evaluating the PIFF food truck
rally by the judges of the GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS on 28th April
2018, PIFF’s Food Truck Invasion (FTI) in Design Village, Batu Kawan was
officially announced on the same night as the GUINNESS WORLD RECORD holder of “largest food truck rally”. Huge
congratulations!
My family and I went to
Design Village on the day after, which was 29th April 2018 (Sunday).
We shopped until 6pm, then went to FTI after we finished our business. There
were so many food trucks, 158 to be exact, with more than 10 types of cuisines
and food from local vendors and vendors from neighbouring countries as well.
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| source: http://penangfoodie.com/penang-international-food-festival-2018-piff-location-venue/ |
The crowd actually wasn’t too crazy at
first, but people started to swarm in like bees after 7pm. I wasn’t surprised
because I already know how Penangites love good food and festivals like this
only adds on the excitement. I mean, what better way to spend your weekend than
celebrating food with other enthusiastic food lovers, right? There were so many
food choices, most of them resembling the food choices offered at pasar malam. There were lots of food
trucks selling burgers, fries and all the fried snacks goodness. Quite a number
of food trucks sold drinks and ice-based desserts (shaved ice, snow ice), like
shaved ice or snow ice. FTI was so cool because it was not only like a food
competition between the food trucks, it was also a tight competition of the
designs of the food truck and presentation of the food.
Then, I decided to do a #RM30foodchallenge:
see what I can buy within the RM30 budget. Of course, my family that consists of 4 hungry beaats couldn’t rely our pre-dinner (that eventually
became our dinner cause there was just so much good food!) solely on the RM30.
We did spend more than that, but the RM30 was to give you guys a rough idea of
what you guys can get within that budget. Let the #RM30foodchallenge commence!
I’m sure most of us Malaysians are very
familiar with Chatime as it has been one of the longest brand on the market
that sells bubble milk tea. Although they have rebranded last year (or was it the year before?), I actually think that their new facelift
is quite successful HAHA Before the rebranding, most of the drinks were kind of
traditional and revolves around milk tea mainly. Now, besides the sweet milktea that everyone loves, they also have a lot of refreshing drinks to quench your thirst during a hot sunny day! For example, the Mango QQ is so refreshing and savoury to drink, blended together with the boba pearls and QQ jelly.
2. Uncle Bob Fried Chicken (RM9)
My brother told me that whenever he goes
to events or functions and Uncle Bob is there, he will surely get the Fried
Chicken cause it is THAT GOOD. Honestly, it tasted 100% like 阿里山鸡, which is the Taiwanese sort of fried chicken you get at their night
market (夜市). The seasoning powder (original/spicy)
compliments the super crispy chicken seamlessly. I would suggest you to get it
from other stalls cause RM9 is a little expensive as compared to other stalls
that sell the same thing for RM7 or RM8.
3. Pilot Café Benggali Bread (Charcoal) + Rocking egg (AKA half boiled egg) (RM5.50)
The original price for combo was just
priced at RM5, but I upgraded my Benggali bread to charcoal bread. So, they
charged an additional RM0.50, which was totally fine by me because I wanna
try something different. First of all, can I say that I feel like I’ve been
deceived by this food truck, cause the presentation of the food is totally
different from the picture. I get that it’s street food here we’re talking
about and I shouldn’t complain that much, but seriously, the bread that I got
looks nothing like the bread displayed in the photo. I was expecting something
more Instagram-worthy, but uh.. the presentation of the bread and the
half-boiled egg was slightly gross. The bread was a bit hard and the
half-boiled egg was too salty to my liking.
4. Ice Lab Taiwanese Shaved Ice in Passion Fruit Flavour (RM8)
The first thing that drew us to this food
truck was how beautifully decorated the food truck was. They have the
Taiwanese/Japanese theme going on, and the colour of the food truck is so
bright and pastel-ish . Their customer service was good as well! My family and
I highly recommend the Taiwanese Shaved Ice from this food truck! The taste of
passion fruit is just nice – not too sweet and not too sour. Besides, the
presentation of the food is so nice, which was a plus.
To sum it up, the RM30 was spent on a
Chatime drink, a fried chicken, Benggali bread + rocking eggs and Taiwanese
shaved ice. Overall, I think the RM30 is pretty well spent, except for the
Chatime Mango QQ because you can get it elsewhere too. To be fair, the Mango QQ
is one of the best flavours from Chatime. We started off our food hunt based
off on our initial decision to have light pre-dinner snacking, so our food and
drinks options in the #RM30foodchallenge were not really heavy duty. If you’re
planning to get your tummy filled when buying food from food trucks like these,
I would suggest you to buy burgers, toasts or sandwiches because bread is
something that contains starch and starch keeps you fuller. Plus the price for
these choices of food are much lower than desserts, surprisingly!
I actually didn’t get to see the buskers
and fireworks display because I was too engrossed with my food throughout the
whole event! We went back around 8:30pm because we were super full and tired
already. I truly think that PIFF
2018 is an acknowledgement and celebration of the numerous accolades awarded to
Penang’s food warriors, who are all so dedicated in serving people good food.
As a Malaysian and a Penangite, I feel so proud of the good job that the state
government has done in promoting cultural entities in Penang. It’s a joy that
we get to share with our international friends by bonding over food. To those
of you who missed PIFF this year, I hope to see you guys at PIFF next year as
well. I will surely try to make it to PIFF again next year and I hope they will
continue to strive for excellence in the future. Penang memang boleh!
Love, J.
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