Maple Palace Chinese Restaurant

Looking for a Chinese restaurant in Penang where dinner means more than one lonely plate? Maple Palace on Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah takes the old-school Cantonese banquet tradition and gives it a polished modern spin, with Iberico char siew, Peking duck, seafood soups, steamed fish and enough dishes to turn a simple family dinner into a full-blown feast.

The standout is the Iberico char siew, while the broader menu rewards groups willing to share. It isn’t the cheapest Chinese meal in George Town, and not every dish lands perfectly, but when Maple Palace gets it right, the combination of roast meats, seafood and Cantonese technique makes a compelling case for this long-running Penang dining room.

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Tek Sen

Tek Sen isn’t famous because Penang needed another tourist restaurant. It’s famous because it has been cooking seriously good Chinese-Malaysian food since 1965. From its legendary double roasted pork and fiery sambal kangkung to homemade tofu and curry tumis fish, this is the kind of George Town chu char that makes waiting in the Penang heat considerably easier to forgive.

The queues can be long, the room can be busy and parking around Carnarvon Street can test your patience — but once the plates start arriving, the logic becomes obvious. Tek Sen isn’t about fancy dining. It’s about wok hei, sticky sauces, chilli, rice and ordering one more dish than you promised yourself you would.

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