A Penang food guide based on my personal views and tastes, archiving the great finds and the personal favourites, so that hopefully it will provide some answers to the question "where to eat?" Comes with dashes of recipes and rants & raves about life in general...
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Tho Yuen Mooncakes
By lingzie | September 12, 2008
The Mid Autumn Festival is upon us! And that means… mooncakes galore!
Every year I am amazed with the new flavors and enticing packaging that they come up with! There’s already the jelly mooncakes and snow skin ones. This year I saw Curry Chicken flavored mooncakes! And bird nest crystal mooncakes. Sampled the curry chicken mooncake…. the verdict? Didn’t taste like mooncake at all!
This year, we decided to go old school and got our mooncakes from Tho Yuen along Campbell Street.
This very ancient shop has been around since 1950 and they are a restaurant that is famous for their dim sum. (whoops! I just realized that VKeong and I took the same shot of the place! lol)
We noticed that Tho Yuen is selling these cute piggy ‘mooncakes’ with lotus paste filling. Rm20 for a pair.
Grandpa was the one who wanted to buy from Tho Yuen cos he reckons they have the best ‘ean thui’ mooncakes around. “Ean Thui” is Hokkien for Chinese Ham. He loves them with mixed nuts. That’s the only mooncake he eats and I think he’s already eaten 3 of them (on his own!)
Chinese ham with mixed nuts mooncakes are an acquired taste. You either love it or hate it. I’ve grown to love it over the years. Its a nutty mix of almonds, walnuts, sesame, more nuts which I can’t identify (lol), Chinese Ham and some orange peel which results in a salty zingy sweet taste. Throw in the salted egg yolk and its…heaven!RM10.50 for the ones with salted egg yolk.
We also bought Pandan, the classic Lotus Paste with Double Yolk mooncake and I couldn’t resist getting the Green Tea one too! Price is around RM10-11 depending on the filling. The green tea one was pretty good - pretty distinct green tea flavour.
I was also delighted to find out that Tho Yuen sells ‘ang kong ah piah’ (literally translated to mean Doll’s Biscuit). These are the ones usually made into shapes of pigs or fishes or sometimes just normal round shapes and have no filling. But I love the ones with dessicated coconut filling which are quite hard to find. So I almost pounced on them the minute I knew Tho Yuen sells them! I must say that I would have preferred the coconut to have a stronger taste though. The ones from Tho Yuen tasted a lil bland to me.
Tho Yuen is located at 92 Campbell Street. Tel: 04-261 4672. They’re now open til 9pm everyday until the end of the Mid Autumn Festival.
Topics: Chinese food, Dessert, Mooncakes |
September 12th, 2008 at 8:55 am
they are the only place my mum will buy the mooncakes. I like their doll biscuits as well. Too bad I missed the midautumn festival this year again.
September 12th, 2008 at 8:59 am
When does the Mid-Autumn Festival end, exactly? It seems the mooncakes been out and about for months already. I have to confess, at this point, I have eaten way too many of them … *bbbuuurrrpppp*
September 12th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
my mum also mention about the mix nuts mooncake by this shop. i think it will be sold out real soon. i think i only can buy it next year.
September 12th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
lex - their doll biscuits are good
Oz can find mooncake? from chinatown maybe?
life for beginners - lol. i’ve only eaten one.
the mid autumn festival ends this Sunday. cant wait to bring out my paper lanterns! they’re so pretty! (i am such a kid! lol)
allen - eh i think still have… can try your luck! my mum just went to buy some last nite.
September 16th, 2008 at 9:58 am
I knew this restaurant from Malaysiabest.net, Lilian mentioned about their awesome mooncakes too
This year I only ate 1 mooncake only.. tiramisu one.. aih. Penang got more of these old restaurants that still sell nice mooncakes