Penang Coffee Shop Directory lists the coffee shops in Penang. The name "coffee shop" came about because coffee, or to be exact, Penang black coffee or kopi-o, was the primary beverage sold at these eateries. Over time, other beverages were added to the drinks menu including tea, MiloTM, barley, NescafeTM, and other local drinks including patpoh, ambra, almond, and so on.
In this directory, the term "coffee shop" refers to all eatery premises in Penang where street fare is sold by hawkers. Traditionally, coffee shops are link shophouses built in the Straits Eclectic style where the eatery business is conducted below, while the coffee shop owner and his family live upstairs. Most coffee shops occupy the corner lot of these link rows.
Nowadays, coffee shops can also be open-air locations where they are more commonly referred to as hawker centres. The owner or anchor tenant of the hawker centre is once again the beverage provider who rent out space to hawkers to ply their food. As for the hawkers, while once most were itinerant vendors, today the majority have a permanent station within the eatery. Today only a minute fraction of Penang hawkers remain itinerant, pushing their carts or three-wheelers through the city streets plying the fare.
It is the hawkers rather than the beverage provider that become the actual stars of the location. Many coffee shops gain fame through the food sold there. It has however been noted that the food and the location quickly become one - many famous hawker stalls quickly lose their clientele as soon as they move to a different location. This combination of food-and-locale is so entrenched that many of the most famous Penang food stalls have been occupying the same lot for decades.
On this page, we try to list as many coffee shops as we can find. The list, if you observe it regularly, continues to grow, as we add more to it. Each thumbnail links to details about the coffee shop. We have also included roadside food stalls and itinerant vendors. Coffee shops marked with New! have just been added on 20 July, 2008.
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