All Malay — Restaurant in New South Wales

I hate to leave bad reviews as I know how difficult it is to run a restaurant.

The staff were great the service good but the food….this place needs a serious think and education about cooking in the year 2022! Went there at 4.30 to book for 6 people at 6pm and apparently the evening was booked out lol.

Ordered take away instead at 6.30 went to pick up and the “restaurant had a handful of people there and all the other tables were empty. The tables were overly decorated with fancy serviette foldings, a dead giveaway for a bad class restaurant. May have been cool back in 1960 lol. About the food! OMG! Where do I start? I was so excited to have Nasi goreng. We also ordered Singapore noodles and chicken satay sticks.

The Nasi goreng, was bland flavourless gooey rice and it had an ambient smell I couldn’t quite pick at first but then it came to me. it was slightly on the nose with a smell of wet dishcloth. It wasn’t spicy and it was luke warm, even though we picked it up on the dot of their 15min service. The only redeeming part that may have made it were the large prawns but they were not cooked right through and tasted like they were boiled.

The Singapore noodles, Very mild tasteless flavour. All noodles chicken was light on but ok and again a couple of virtually raw prawns. Nothing you would expect from a high priced “booked out” restaurant. .

The satay chicken skewers were tough and the sauce stone cold and was in a seperate plastic container. The chicken was barely warm. The flavour wasn’t too bad though.

All in all it smacked of ignorance, either of the chef or owner, whoever it was had no idea of what Malaysian food was. I had better Malaysian food in the 1970’s. Not knowing how to make Malaysian food in this century is unforgivable.

Price wise it was on the top end of average restaurant pricing. For that you would expect it to be good but regrettably it was far from it. The “booked out “ ploy was a ruse IMO to try and make you think it was good. We would never eat from there again, it was really awful food. I have had better in the average take away chicken shop out of Bain-marie. In fact if you paid me to eat there again I wouldn’t.

They have a 3 stat scores on doors review which is a health and value score. It’s the lowest hygiene rating.. That explains the dish cloth smell. So it’s kind of weird that they would even display that score. Maybe they have to I don’t know.

Maybe other dishes are ok but this is based on the ones mentioned above. How it got good reviews is beyond me. My advice give it a miss until they can admit their food is ghastly and do...

Food is fantastic but is not worth the service that you are subjected to, which is nothing short of deplorable.

On this particular visit we were seen to my abrupt, immature adolescent waitresses.

Before my partner and I were seated, we were told that we could not have had entree's that they were to come out with the mains, as they 'want to leave soon' (this was at 8pm and they close at 9pm) I asked the young girl to repeat this to me as she said it to my girlfriend, and I thought i misheard, she repeated herself with an attitude and threw on the end that "if you have a problem with it take it up with the chefs as i do no make the rules" I did not have a problem with that as we did not endeavour to have entrees anyway.

We were seated, and felt to feel like our patronage was a burden on the staff. After 5 minutes, we were moved to an alternative table as they wanted to bring seating in from outside and start their closedown, so we moved.

There was no music, no smiling staff, no atmosphere, and the piss poor attitudes from the wait staff to make you feel warm and welcome.

While seated, the staff turned away 3 more tables advising that they are closing and they will have to have take away or leave (30 minutes before they close) OK!

The man who i assume is the owner strolls out of the kitchen to go into damage control because we were in ear shot of this, and ambushed mine and my partners meal and proceeded to tell us how he cannot afford staff, 3 tables is not worth staying open, penalty rates affect him, he wants to go home soon, are we finished, what his staff earn an hour, how much percentage he makes on sales, and he failed to pick up on social ques that we where trying to just enjoy our meal, after he failed to leave us alone we had the meal packed up into containers, paid the bill and left unsatisfied and unhappy.

With so many options on the coast, wont be returning here even if I was paid...

I am a Malaysian who grew up eating Malaysian food. I'll start with the positives. I arrived quite late around 8:30pm, but the staffs were happy to accommodate and still served everything we ordered. The special fried rice was full of "wok hey" (breath of wok), great stir fried skills there 4.5/5.

Please accept the following feedback with an open mind. I ordered beef rendang and Penang char keow teow as these are good dishes to gauge authenticity. Unfortunately, these just missed the marks big time. Beef rendang were very chewy. It had potatoes which is not an ingredient used for rendang. The gravy were clearly missing some key spices. Having said that, the taste was not bad, but definitely not authentic. The Penang Char Keow Teow was definitely not penang style if you have eaten an authentic one. It should contain Chinese sausage, chives and blood cockles (or clams) topped with crispy pork lard.

For those who have been saying this is the most authentic Malaysian taste, I hope you will do yourself a favour and taste some authentic Malaysian restaurants in NSW.

I'd recommend Angkasa at Budgewoi for the beef rendang and Tasty of Penang in Burwood for the Penang Char Keow Teow and many more authentic tasting Malaysian...