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.

 

 

[C. sapidus]

DC has one - Makan (clicky) - but if I have eaten there it would have been way back when I lived closer.

 

I do cook Malaysian recipes, but I've never been within thousands of miles of the country itself.

[weinoo]

When we first moved down here to the lower east side/Chinatown, there were a couple of ostensibly Malaysian restaurants.  I'm guessing @KennethT remembers one or two of them.  (One's specialty was what they called "mouse-tail" noodles). We liked them, but they were probably not super authentic...they were just putting out tasty food. They don't exist any more, but that doesn't mean I haven't saved a menu or two from that era.

 

 

 

 

[cdh]

Is the NYC Penang still in business and producing good food?  Philly's is still going, though I've not been in a decade.  And the Penang folks also had Nyonya in NYC too, no?  Still there? Looking Penang Philly up also told me that it has a competitor around the block as well... and South Philly's Indonesian place, Hardena, seems to be still going as well... Need to go on a trip down there and try them out after reading KennethT's travel blog...   

 

edit for spelling

Edited 5 hours ago by cdh (log)

[KennethT]

8 minutes ago, cdh said:

Is the NYC Penang still in business and producing god food?  Philly's is still going, though I've not been in a decade.  And the Penang folks also had Nyonya in NYC too, no?  Still there? Looking Penang Philly up also told me that it has a competitor around the block as well... and South Philly's Indonesian place, Hardena, seems to be still going as well... Need to go on a trip down there and try them out after reading KennethT's travel blog...   

The NYC Penang has been closed a long time.  I used to go there a lot many many years ago (late 90s!)

 

Nyonya is still there - and we go there from time to time - it's ok, but all things being equal if I had the time, my versions of what they make are better - but I don't have to worry about sky high rent, or wage increases and profit.

[weinoo]

As @KennethT says above.  And in my neighborhood, there's Kopitiam.  Which Ken can probably tell you more about than I can.

 

 

[KennethT]

1 hour ago, weinoo said:

As @KennethT says above.  And in my neighborhood, there's Kopitiam.  Which Ken can probably tell you more about than I can.

 

 

We only went to Kopitiam once but we were definitely underwhelmed.  The highlight was their curry puff, which was amazing and we went back at the end to get a second round.  Their kueh were ok, but Lady Wong's definitely better.

[Rickbern]

There’s a place in elmhurst, queens called “taste good” that I went to a few weeks ago that was pretty good but if I was going that far off the beaten track I’d probably switch and go for Indonesian instead. 
 

in manhattan chinatown I like west new Malaysia, although I’m nobody’s idea of an expert in this cuisine

 

Malaysian 🇲🇾 

https://westnewmalaysia.org

Indonesian 🇮🇩

https://awangkitchen.com