Istana Malaysia Restaurant — Restaurant in North Island

EDIT following the restaurant's response: You have many negative reviews all saying exactly the same things if you paid attention. As some have already told you before, gaslighting people versed in Malaysian cuisine who give you honest reviews, and denial over how mediocre, overpriced and not Malaysian the food you serve, is not going to fix your restaurant's food issues. I lived in Malaysia for years, and had nasi lemak every other day, and murtabak frequently. So keep that gaslighting condescending response to yourself, be humble for a change, and focus on fixing your food instead. With your immature gaslighting attitude of denial towards feedback, the countdown is on before this restaurant is forced to shut down. If you need someone to coach you on your food, and tell you how to fix it on the spot until it's right, that's a food consultant for hire that you need, that's not your customers' job. Customers come to eat, they pay, they're not paid to babysit you step-by-step into fixing your food, and they leave reviews after. That's how the hospo industry works FYI. Just own up and fix your food, the consistent good reviews will follow...

Arrogantly high pricing, extremely stingy on the meat and portion sizes, very average flavours, a serious insult to authentic Malaysian food (I lived in Asia for many years). After spending 25$ each there, we still had to go home to make a real dinner because we were far from full. Worst Malaysian food I've ever had and I had Malaysian food daily for years. The water was the highlight.

The lamb murtabak was small, dry, bland and filled with overcooked very dry egg and the stingiest amount of lamb in it, I had to search for the lamb in it to find sparse small pieces of mince.

My (Malaysian) friend had something pretending to be "nasi lemak", whatever that was.They stinged on the coconut cream so the rice didn't taste of coconut at all. The hardboiled egg was an overcooked disgusting-looking green yolk in a very rubbery white, please educate the cook: proper hard-boiled eggs, with a bright yellow yolk and soft white are made by boiling eggs for no more than 6 minutes, it's really not that hard to get this right. No ikan bilis (dried fried anchovies) either on the plate, stingy amount of peanuts, unforgivable for a nasi lemak. The rendang it was served with was meh.

Atmosphere-wise, the place is on the nicer side. It was unusually cold inside the restaurant, looks like they stinge on heating too on cold days. The fish tank had sick fish in it (one fish upside down gasping on the surface which I told the staff but he said "she always does that" – even worse and showing they neglect the tank) and mirky with fish poop. Don't have a fish tank if you don't know how to take care of it, it's not a good look at all, especially for a restaurant. Drop the tank and just focus on getting the food right.

Unsurprisingly, the people eating there were all Pakeha and not a single Asian/Malaysian in sight. One Malaysian family walked in, looked at the menu and left. We should have done that.

On the positive side, the staff that served us was sweet, friendly and professional. Unfortunately, no amount of great service makes up for embarrassingly terrible food.

In conclusion, my Malaysian friend and I will absolutely never eat there again and certainly never recommend it to our Malaysian friends and visitors. This is Malaysian-posing, stingy, overpriced food for the uneducated, untravelled White palate that goes "wow" at the slightest hint of flavours and spices. It may be the oldest Malaysian restaurant in town, but calling this place over-rated, glorified and an insult to Malaysian food is an understatement.

That's the problem when non-Malaysians appropriate a Malaysian menu, they just want a theme to sell whatever sells to the masses and will butcher traditional food – left, right and centre, it's very sad. That, and a cook that clearly lacks absolutely basic...

**EDIT read the owners reply and its sad that they have to blatantly lie and gaslight rather than take it on board. Im sorry that we had to give you a bad review but I can't not tell the truth and pretend it was good. We got a better char kway teow at KC which isn't even malaysian. Take some feedback and fix things. Came down to Wellington for a long weekend of eating out across the city.

Was excited to try some great Malaysian and Istana came up with a pretty great rating in all searches. Was a bonus it was BYO.

We got there and were hopeful we would have some delicious food - boy were we wrong!

We ordered the chicken satay as a starter. These were OK but what came next was so bad I'm still in shock.

We got the Laksa with seafood and the Char Keow Teow with Chicken. We also got a plain roti and a garlic roti.

The seafood laksa came and was so bland it was embarrassing, I asked for sambal so I could mix it in to try and get some flavour. That wasn't the worst part though.... the 'seafood' was a frozen marinara mix that cheap restaurants buy in frozen bags from food wholesalers. For anyone to be serving this and charging $32 for a meal is a disgrace and should seriously be illegal.

Next the Char Keow Teow....omg this was a slop of broken rice noodles with dry chicken bits and a scatter of bean sprouts all drenched in soy sauce.

The rotis tasted like frozen ones the food wholesalers sell.... but were probably the best part of the entire meal.

When the waitress came to clear our plates she asked how the meal was and we responded honeslty and said it was terrible, she just awkwardly laughed and quickly took our plates away.

Literally the worst malaysian we have had in our lives. We eat Malaysian regularly in Auckland, are in our mid 40s, foodies and have traveled - maybe the people giving them good reviews have never eaten malaysian (or good food for that matter) before. The meal was so bad I'm actually angry about spending $80 there.

Please do yourself a favour and spend your money elsewhere. I love supporting small business but this place needs to sort themselves out. How they are not embarrased about what they served up tonight...

The worst Malaysian i’ve had in my life. How this place gets a good rating is beyond belief. The Roti was the highlight, which is sad because its probably just a microwave ready to eat one .. nothing special. The laksa was bland, watery and consisted of something similar to a thawed out frozen seafood marinara packet complete with mussels. The chur kuey toew won the award for worst dish of the evening .. a slimey bland mash of a thing drowning in dark soy sauce and lacking in actual any ingredients.. it was the the opposite of what this iconic dish I love should be.

The wait staff asked how our meal was, I answered ‘terrible’ at that point she laughed and walked away. what a shame .. I would have liked to explain all the reasons why we weren’t happy with our meal .. but we weren’t given the opportunity as she clearly didn’t want to hear it. Why ask how the meal was if you aren’t interested in the answer? On leaving and paying the bill we also said it was terrible and again they didn’t ask why or want to hear what was wrong. I also stress we we hadn’t finished the food .. it was 50% eaten but only because we were starving and just spent $80 of our hard earned cash on it.

If this is what food tastes like in malaysia I won’t be travelling there.

We weren’t upset corkage was charged, that’s normal and what I expect .. in Auckland a BYO corkage fee exists, but it’s by the glass/person, not per bottle. Also hilarious to hear you say we we were ‘concealing bottles’ ..we had just shopped at New world and taking our shopping back to the hotel. we were also ‘concealing’ flavoured milk and other groceries! It was a wind warning night with 120kph gusts and thought we would combine a supermarket shop with a cheap n cheerful dinner while it was still safe to walk around at night.

I’m incredibly disappointed and angry we paid lots of money for this...