Hanoi v Penang: which Asian street-food capital wins the ultimate taste test?

From pho to fusion, the ultimate food fight boils down to how spicy, salty and sweet you like your secret sauce. Let our experts help you decide.

Asian street food has always been an adventure in sensory overload. In years gone by, the adventure often lasted for days and played a significant role in the early success of Imodium.

These days, street food markets sizzle with the sights, sounds and, most wonderfully, the smells of an exciting culinary and cultural encounter. The local lingo bubbles as freely as the hot pots, loosely translated as "let's see if we can get them to eat that".

While the hawker stalls in Penang invite you to play "guess the protein skewer", the Hanoi version often consists of proper meals. Of course, you can still perch on a tiny plastic stool you initially thought was Tupperware on the footpath within inches of tooting motor scooters and dive into a steaming bowl of something roughly ladled from grandma's ancient cauldron, but Hanoi's dining options are many, varied and unique.

Start your day with ca phe sua da (iced coffee strong enough to wake your ancestors), and then tuck into a classic Hanoian pho, typically made with beef simmered in cardamom, cinnamon, coriander and cloves. That's breakfast sorted.

Next, take the time to find a cool restaurant for lunch. The best of these can be found by following the scented smoke down an obscure alleyway or up a winding staircase to an eatery that lies beyond the reach of even the most pugnacious scooter.

The Hanoi Old Quarter is the place to go, and bun cha is the dish to seek out. Hanoi's official unofficial dish is a slurpingly addictive umami broth brimming with pork belly and meatballs and a side of vermicelli noodles for dipping. Banh cuon, a rice paper roll filled with minced pork and mushrooms guaranteed not to be sourced from regional Victoria, is the perfect entree.

READ ALSO: Which Vietnamese hotspot is for you - Ho Chi Minh City or Hanoi?

Many restaurants have hand-scrawled menus on the wall, so unless you are fluent in Vietnamese, Google Translate will be your new bestie.

A few common words to look for include Bo (beef), Ga (chicken), Ca (fish), Chay (vegetarian), Com (rice), Bun (rice noodles) and Ech (frog).

One should never look down their nose or stick their tongue out at Penang's street food, largely because after an hour or so inhaling chilli, the nose is rendered functionally useless, and the tongue has dialled triple zero to report a curry fire. Unless it is with Optus, of course.

Hanoi offers a truly redolent and authentic eating escapade, where grilling meats, salty fish sauce, exotic spices and a soupcon of motorbike exhaust all form an intoxicating panoply of aromas and flavours you simply can't get anywhere else.

Unless you have a pho-bia, three-hat Hanoi should be your street food destination.

Welcome to the hunger games, an Asian street food fight in which Mal feels pho-mo in Hanoi while I dive into the dizzying, delicious diversity of George Town.

Penang's capital makes you yearn for a stomach with a handy extension feature like those suitcase-expanding zips or a pop-top on a combi van. The island is the biggest buffet table at Malaysia's banquet, where the country's multitudinous multicultural influences converge in a cornucopia of choices limited only by your capacity to consume them. No matter how often you go or how much you eat, you will leave with an even greater wish list.

Over centuries, people crossed oceans to George Town's trading hub. They exchanged goods, money, ideas - and cooked. Boy, how they cooked. Chinese, Indian, Burmese, Thai, Arab, European incomers all pouring their native flavours into dishes seasoned with a potent sauce of homesickness and hope. As cultures mingled, so too did their food. Peranakan or Nyonya cuisine, the spicy, tangy and salty mix of Malay and Chinese, infused George Town's seaside air with aromas of tamarind, lemongrass and chilli. From south India came soft, buttery breads (roti) and pungent curries, forming unlikely friendships with south China's soy sauces and soft noodles. Seafood bounty from the surrounding Strait of Malacca anchored it all in Penang-only signatures like assam laksa, distinguished by its fish-based, tamarind-infused soup.

Penang's culinary kaleidoscope comes with a matching backdrop. Confucian, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu and British colonial all co-exist in a joyous jumble of temples, mansions and shophouses. Murals adorn the walls, but the real street artists are the food vendors, their specialities perfected over generations, their culinary mastery underplayed by rickety tables, plastic chairs and weathered woks.

Trying to itemise George Town's eateries is like pointing someone at a beach with a list of where to find sand. Good food is everywhere - just take your appetite for a walk, through streets or hawker centres like Sungai Pinang Food Court or Gurney Drive Hawker Centre.