Malaysian restaurants outside of Malaysia

[BeeZee]

There is a "Malaysian" restaurant near where I live (not outstanding, but there are a few dishes we like), but you can see there is very little authentic Malaysian food on the menu (similarly as noted by @liuzhou they seem to go for the easily recognized Americanized Chinese and Thai dishes).https://www.pasarmalamprinceton.com/menu.php

 

[liuzhou]

4 hours ago, BeeZee said:

There is a "Malaysian" restaurant near where I live (not outstanding, but there are a few dishes we like), but you can see there is very little authentic Malaysian food on the menu (similarly as noted by @liuzhou they seem to go for the easily recognized Americanized Chinese and Thai dishes

 

The same happens here in Asia. There was a Thai restaurant opened in town a few years back. Everything on their menu was the same Chinese dishes you could find in any restaurant in town, but they had parked a quarter lime on top! Except, it wasn't even lime. It was a local green lemon!

 

They lasted about a month!

[JoNorvelleWalker]

On 1/13/2025 at 8:54 AM, KennethT said:

Malaysian or Indonesian restaurants here in NY are few and far between.  Those that are here are even less than mediocre and are expensive for what they are doing. 

 

When you did frequent your local Malaysian place, what did you typically order?  I had a discussion with some Malay friends a while back - we were trying to decide why Malaysian food hasn't taken off in NYC (or elsewhere for that matter) like the various regional Chinese or Thai has.  My thought was that the Chinese and Thai have a few dishes that everyone knows - mapo tofu, pad Thai, various stir fries with known ingredients, etc.  while most Malaysian/Indonesian dishes are unknown quantities so people would be nervous ordering them not knowing what they'll taste like.   I think of it like a killer app for software companies.  Or maybe it's the fact that shrimp paste is in everything....

 

In this area there is group of several locally well regarded Thai restaurants, the owner/chef of which is actually Malaysian, not Thai.  Recently he opened a Malaysian restaurant nearby that someday I would like to try.

 

[liuzhou]

8 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

the owner/chef of which is actually Malaysian, not Thai.

 

That is normal.

 

There have been at least a dozen Japanese restaurants in town which were 100% Chinese owned and staffed. No Japanese involvement. Around 90% of "Indian" restaurants in the UK are Bangladeshi owned and staffed and I read somewhere (Bourdain?) that most  cooks in "Chinese restaurants" in the US are Mexican. 

 

Extremely few of the  western restaurants in China are owned or staffed by westerners.