Restaurants, hotels, bars and wineries in Penang from the En Primeur Club guide.
Accolades in Penang
George Town holds the broadest spread of the city’s restaurant options, from fine dining to hawker counters and kopitiam formats.
La Vie is George Town fine dining in a historic setting. The kitchen cooks European food with Asian influences, and the menu includes Japanese wagyu A4 steaks. The cooking is described as Michelin-recognized. The wine program has an extensive wine list.
Penang Road Famous Laksa and Penang Road Famous Teochew Chendul is a George Town street stall with Michelin Bib Gourmand recognition. Its Assam Laksa ranks 7th on CNN’s World’s 50 Best Foods list. Each day the stall simmers the laksa broth from fresh sardines and over a dozen spices, and Teochew chendul is served at the same stop.
OO White Coffee, Tiger Char Kway Teow, and Gow Thew Chik Hainana Chicken Rice share one George Town kopitiam room. The three stalls cover white coffee, char kway teow, and Hainanese chicken rice, with counter dining and a la carte service.
Backdoor Bodega is a George Town bar with Asia’s Best Bars and Tatler awards. The Edison George Town holds Small Luxury Hotels of the World membership, and Shangri-La Rasa Sayang Resort and Spa is Michelin Selected for 2025.
Backdoor Bodega is George Town’s most decorated younger bar in this guide, with a minimal wine program and craft cocktails built around Penang’s local flavour traditions. Its awards include World’s 50 Best Asia’s Best Bars rankings, Tatler Rising Star, and Tatler Best Bars Asia-Pacific recognition.
The Edison George Town is a restored 1906 Anglo-Colonial mansion in George Town, used as a heritage hotel in the city. The property holds Small Luxury Hotels of the World membership, and that membership is dated 2025 in our guide.
Shangri-La Rasa Sayang Resort and Spa is a beachfront resort in Batu Feringgi and was selected by the Michelin Hotels guide in 2025. The resort has traditional Minangkabau architecture, lowrise wings, 30 acres of tropical gardens, and century-old rain trees.
George Town holds the most venues in our guide, with 10 in the neighbourhood. This is a neighbourhood count, separate from the citywide venue totals. No other neighbourhood in these counts reaches 10. George Town has the largest venue count in our guide.
Penang has no Michelin-starred restaurants in our guide. Penang Road Famous Laksa and Penang Road Famous Teochew Chendul holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand. The stall prepares its Assam Laksa broth each day using fresh sardines and over a dozen spices.
Wine-led dining in our guide is La Vie, in George Town. La Vie has an extensive wine list. The restaurant serves European cooking with Asian influences in a historic George Town setting, and the menu includes Japanese wagyu A4 steaks.
Backdoor Bodega holds Asia’s Best Bars and Tatler awards. The Edison George Town, Bertam Wellness Spa and Villas, and Eythrope Boutique Villa hold Small Luxury Hotels of the World membership for 2025. Shangri-La Rasa Sayang Resort and Spa is Michelin Selected for 2025. Angsana Teluk Bahang, Penang holds regional and country World Luxury Hotel Awards. Penang Road Famous Laksa and Penang Road Famous Teochew Chendul holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.
By Emmett Haley · Updated October 8, 2026 · Editorial standards
Penang
Selected entries from the current guide for Penang.
Penang, Malaysia
Three hawker addresses in Penang's Air Itam township that collectively define the neighbourhood's street food identity: a tamarind-sour asam laksa, char koay teow with wok hei to spare, and a Hokkien mee built on a dark prawn shell broth. Together they form a working itinerary for anyone serious about tracing Penang's Hokkien and Nyonya food traditions back to source.
Penang, Malaysia
Ka Bee Cafe and Laksa Mamu sits within Penang's crowded hawker tradition, where a bowl of laksa carries as much cultural weight as the setting around it. George Town's cafe culture produces exactly this kind of address: low-key in presentation, precise in execution, and embedded in the daily rhythms of a neighbourhood rather than the itineraries of passing visitors.
Penang, Malaysia
Three of Penang's most closely watched hawker institutions share a single itinerary: Nasi Kandar Deen Mutiara for the curry-drenched rice tradition that defines the island's Muslim-Indian eating culture, Padang Tembak Claypot for slow-cooked, coal-fired claypot rice, and Loh Kei Duck Meat for braised duck in spiced loh sauce. Together they map the structural diversity of George Town's street-food canon.
Penang, Malaysia
Three hawker institutions sharing a single address in Penang: OO White Coffee for the island's characteristic milky brew, Tiger Char Kway Teow for wok-fired flat noodles with proper breath-of-the-wok char, and Gow Thew Chik Hainanese Chicken Rice for the poached-bird standard that defines the Straits Chinese table. A multi-stall format that regulars treat as a complete meal circuit rather than a single-dish stop.
Penang, Malaysia
On a stretch of George Town's Penang Road that has drawn hawker crowds for decades, the twin stalls serving asam laksa and Teochew chendul represent two of the city's most recognised street food stops. The queue forms early, the bowls arrive fast, and the flavours, sour, funky, sweet, make the case for why Penang's hawker culture sits at the centre of Malaysian food conversation.
Penang, Malaysia
A Penang institution in the tong sui tradition, Woong Kee Beancurd and Tong Sui Po serves the kind of soy-based sweets and silken tofu preparations that define the city's Chinese dessert culture. The setting is casual and communal, the prices accessible, and the menu rooted in Cantonese and Hokkien sweet-soup customs that have shaped Penang's late-night eating habits for generations.
Penang
Selected entries from the current guide for Penang.
Penang, Malaysia
Set in the quieter northern reaches of Penang Island, Bertam Wellness Spa and Villas draws on an unlikely design synthesis: Moroccan architectural language transplanted into Malaysian tropical terrain. The result is a retreat oriented around lagoons, fragrant gardens, and restoration rather than resort spectacle, a counterpoint to the beach-front properties that dominate most visitors' Penang itineraries.
Penang, Malaysia
Angsana Teluk Bahang sits on Penang's quieter northwestern shore, where the island's forested hills meet the Andaman Sea. Recognised as a Regional Winner for Luxury Ocean View and a Country Winner for Luxury Family Beach Resort, it positions itself in a distinct tier of Malaysian coastal hospitality, one that prizes open water sightlines and a calibrated approach to family-focused service over urban amenity density.
Penang
Selected entries from the current guide for Penang.
No venues found.
Penang
Selected entries from the current guide for Penang.
No venues found.
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