Penang:Hai Onn Hainanese Restaurant

From Malaysia - Wiki Street Food

Hai Onn Restaurant(海安饭店) in Burma Road has always come across popularly for its Koay Teow Teng(Flat Noodles Soup) and Hokkien Mee(Prawn Noodles) in the morning. But not much people know that it also serves excellent Hainanese Zhu Cha and western dish with unbelievable cheap price in the afternoon. The main concept of this old style traditional Hainanese restaurant is to provide economic but delicious Hainanese cuisine.

Currently the restaurant owned by the second generation, Mr. Chiah(謝是芳), who is also the president of Penang Hainan Association 2007/2008. Although he was born in around 1949, Hai Onn Restaurant already started the business at that time. Everyday from early 6am until 9pm, Mr. Chiah will be in the kitchen to prepare the best dishes to customer.

The interior of the restaurant is unpretentious and low profile. The marbled tables in the restaurant are becoming rare nowadays. This kind of environment creates a wrong impression that customers are dining back to decades ago coffee shop.

Food wise, one of the significant dishes here is their Hainanese pork or chicken chop. Their version is done differently from others, consists of egg, chicken cutlets, potatoes and tomatoes slices in it. Usually customer will order a toast bread, to dip with the savory gravy of this dish, which is rich and tasty. Other than that, the restaurant also serves famous dishes like Hainanese Hokkien Char, Hainanese fish chip, roti babi, Kapitan chicken, coffee fish, fried sotong and many others.

Although the food here is heavenly good and unbelievable cheap, usually customer need to spent quite some time to wait, especially during peak hour. This is because the chef always takes his time cooking up the dishes. Anyway customer can always order side dish from the Lobak stall as an appetizer. The Lobak taste good too.

Old style corridor to the restaurant
Corridor of the old style street that can represent the uniqueness of Penang town.

Front view of the restaurant
Unpretentious and low profile restaurant, but with tremendous great food and unbelievable cheap price.

Interior view
Old style dining environment that brings wrong impression of dining back to decades ago.

Hainanese Chicken Chop, RM3.50
Heavenly good chicken chop, consists of egg, chicken cutlets, potatoes and tomatoes slices in it. The version is different from western cuisine restaurant.

Common bread just to dip with the chicken chop gravy

Delicious bread that dipped with chicken chop gravy
The savory gravy of the Hainanese chicken chop is rich and tasty, which is best to dip with plain bread.

Aromatic roti babi
A traditional dish, which is deep fried bread with egg gravy. The pork slice filling makes this dish more aromatic.

Lobak
Appetizer, which taste great although it is just a common dish.

Hainanese Hokkien Char
The simplicity of this dish which does not have the usual thick black soy sauce that most hawkers will use nowadays in cooking this dish.

Lobak stall
Lobak stall with different kinds of Lobak

Different sauces prepared by the owner
Different kind of sauces prepared by the restaurant owner for different dishes. For chicken chop, noodle, roti babi and others.