Laut — Restaurant in New York

Malaysian looking for a taste of home here. This would make anyone NOT want to visit Malaysia. Lo and behold, I found out the owner of this restaurant has never set foot in Malaysia. Not even once and he boasts about it. You can look this up for yourself.

And it's pretty obvious he has never been to Malaysia because the food was a joke. You can already tell by how many cuisines are lumped together on the menu. There's Thai, Malaysian, Singaporean, Indonesian. These regions are vastly different and you HAVE to visit the country to learn and appreciate the culinary diversity.

My fiance and I got the following dishes: Indo Nasi Goreng -Bland -Prawn cracker was so soggy, probably not kept properly in an air tight container. Malaysians, if you're reading this, you know we call this "masuk angin". -Birdseye chilies were stale, wilted, and soggy -Chicken was so bland I had to ask for sweet soy sauce which they didn't even have (how can you serve Indonesian Nasi Goreng without sweet soy sauce?)

Curry Laksa -Even blander -Overly sweet -The spice feels like an afterthought. You only taste the coconut milk and then the spiciness hits you after. -If you go to any hawker center in Singapore, you won't find random cucumber slices in curry laksa.

The meals came with soup and spring rolls. -Spring rolls were soggy -Why does your soup have lettuce in it? I hate it when chefs randomly add unnecessary garnish just because they want to get rid of it.

Spice in Malaysian cooking is not just about the heat. The flavors from the spices have to blend harmoniously with the dish throughout the cooking process. At best, I felt like I was eating a caricature of Malaysian food...almost like a "spicy food challenge" of sorts.

To add insult to injury, the payment terminal stated that the minimum tip is 20%. Tipping culture in this country has gone too far. How about pay your employees a fair wage instead of passing on the responsibility to customers? Call me petty but I'll be leaving a bad review on every restaurant that forces customers to pay a minimum tip amount. Tipping should be optional.

All in all, what a shame and an insult to Malaysian cuisine. I hope the owner visits Malaysia and learn from our aunties and uncles who can show him what real Malaysian food...

Went here with a friend to try out some South East Asian food I had been craving. Abit of background, I grew up in Singapore and thus have a pretty good baseline to compare the food to.

The restaurant was clean and decorated well, with murals adorning the walls and references to SEA food stall culture everywhere. We were seated after a decent wait with seemingly no staff paying attention to the crowd of people waiting to state how many people were in their party until a good 10-15 minutes or so. A bit off-putting but not too bad.

After sitting down, we ordered roti telur to share along with nasi lemak and hainanese chicken rice as entrées. The roti telur was pretty good, with the roti being characteristically moist, soft and ever so slightly sweet to go along with the curry, however my issues stem mostly with the mains.

Having had hainanese chicken rice from places like Nyonya in the East Village and various places around California, I was personally let down by Laut's interpretation of the dish. The chicken, while plentiful, was dry, the rice didn't have that much of signature galangal/gingery flavor to it, although the chili sauce was good. To me it didn't feel like hainanese chicken rice, but more like fried chicken with rice with taste elements that draw inspiration from the original.

Not to say anything about the nasi lemak my friend had, which on the plate already didn't look too promising in my opinion, with the sambal lacking character and flavor, and the various accompaniments such as ikan bilis, peanuts and chicken not tasting cohesive when put altogether like nasi lemak back in SEA do.

Overall it's a decent place to dip your toes into SEA food if you haven't before, but for the price and dearth of familiarity with the foods I grew up eating but could find in other places in the city, I won't be...

I was on the waitlist and the table was ready. We were literally outside and went in within 10 minutes.

However the hostess (May 9th evening) canceled the table and gave it to another walk-in. What’s more interesting is that she promised we’ll get the next table instead. Then she went on to give two other tables to two other parties (all white btw).

When I asked why, she tried to pin it on me saying the other two parties have a reservation and I didn’t confirm. However the text said they’ll hold the table for 15 minutes, didn’t say I’ll need to confirm otherwise we’ll lose the table. We didn’t have the reservation because she canceled it. And she literally said ‘You’ll get the next table. Please wait outside. I’ll call you really soon.’

She then said yes it was her fault but there was nothing she could do because the other two parties have reservations. But she promised we’ll get the next table available. I mean, don’t say that and let us waiting outside for another 15 minutes? And she gave our table to another walk-in literally minutes ago.

Then someone in line said one of the other parties didn’t even have everyone arrived and was waiting for another person, and that the hostess was only coming up with some story after she did this.

It could be just a mistake that she canceled our table. But I can’t think of another reason other than being a racist of why she went on giving tables to other parties after promised we’ll get the next one.

It was ridiculous because I was looking at the empty table and she still gave it to the other party that arrived later than us and was waiting for one more person to come.

We went to the Indian place across the street then, which was wonderful. Thank god people were friendly and...