CHEE CHEONG FUN - Penang Street Food

Did you know that Chee Cheong Fun was selected as the No.7 Must Eat Hawker Food through an online poll on the Visit Penang website in 2009? Chee Cheong Fun is made of rice flour that is steamed and rolled up to about 10 cm long, hand-sliced and served with a mixture of chilli paste, shrimp paste ( called hae ko ), a reddish sweet sauce and sprinkled with roasted sesame seeds. 

CHEE CHEONG FUN - Penang Street Food

Chee Cheong Fun has a sweet and slightly spicy shrimp flavour, while the texture of the noodles is smooth, making it an excellent base for the savoury sauce. In fact, it is the shrimp paste that most customers come for as the black and smooth paste made from prawn stock and salt has a strong, tasty fishy flavour without the lingering fishy smell in your mouth. Penang's shrimp paste is the most sought-after as the state produces the best shrimp in the market. 

In Singapore and Malaysian cuisine, many people prefer serving chee cheong fun with a kind of black sweet sauce called (甜酱, timzheong). It is likely a variation of hoisin sauce. 

The popular Malaysian Penang version uses a shrimp paste called hae ko which is also black and sweet. Ipoh, being another food capital of Malaysia, chee cheong fun is mainly served in two ways, the dry or wet versions. In the 'dry version', it is served with soy sauce, sesame seeds, fried shallots, onion oil and in most cases, chilly sauce as well as pickled green chilly. In the 'wet version', it is served with curry and mushroom gravy, other than sesame seeds and fried shallots, giving Ipoh Chee Cheong Fun a rather distinctively Ipoh character.  

Chee cheong fun is a popular breakfast food in Singapore and Malaysia. Chee cheong fun is frequently served in kopitiams and Chinese restaurants.

A plate of Chee Cheong Fun costs around RM2.00 to RM2.50