Ask Mr. Gold

QUESTION: Help out a homesick expat. In Singapore and Malaysia we love eating buttery rotis with a bowl of dal (often with chunks of meat) for breakfast. Where in the Southland can we find such comestibles?

Location Info

Map

Penang Malaysian Cuisine

971 S. Glendora Ave.
West Covina, CA 91790

Category: Restaurant > Malaysian

Region: Central San Gabriel Valley

Photos

0 user reviews	Write A Review
Save to foursquare	0

Related Content

• Pico Youth and Family Center's Tearful Supporters Speak Out as Santa Monica City Council Considers Defunding
  May 23, 2012
• Baby Mountain Lion Killed by Santa Monica Cops After Wandering Into 2nd Street Courtyard
  May 22, 2012
• Lotería Opens (Again) on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica
  May 15, 2012
• Santa Monica Parking Meters Steal Time, Rollback to Zero After Every Car
  May 14, 2012
• Democratic War for L.A.'s Richest
  May 24, 2012

More About

• Santa Monica
• Elmhurst (New York)
• Kuala Lumpur
• Malaysian Food and Cooking
• Food and Cooking

Like this Story?

Get the Squid Ink'd: Sign up for our weekly food newsletter, which features top local food news and events, plus interviews with chefs and restaurant owners, dining tips and a link to our print review.

Make sign up easy with:

—Patrick, Santa Monica

ANSWER: New Yorkers longing for Malaysian cooking have always tended to head to one of the Penangs out in Flushing, Elmhurst or in Manhattan’s Chinatown, sleek Malaysian-Chinese diners where the flavors are cleaned up a little too assiduously, but provide creditable versions of some of the highlights of the cuisine: the shrimp-funky rojak salads, curried fish heads and char kway teow. The places never seemed quite up to the level of such Los Angeles Malaysian restaurants as Kuala Lumpur or Yazmin, but they were good enough to tide over a craving for a week or two.

Still, Penang always had great roti canai: delicately crisp flour pancakes as large as crumpled handkerchiefs, almost thin enough to read through and practically sizzling with hot butter, served with a small bowl of hotly spiced chicken curry. And the roti canai at the first California location of Penang, located in a sleepy Chinese shopping center in West Covina, are every bit as good. It is hard to restrain yourself from gobbling them up the second they come to the table. Which is good, because the roti become as hard and unappealing as fried phonograph records when you let them sit for more than a minute or two. Penang, 971 S. Glendora Ave., West Covina, 626-338-6138.