New Ipoh Kitchen Asian Cuisine — Restaurant in New York

I ordered delivery from here because my usual go-to Malaysian restaurant was closed, and wanted to try out other similar options in my area. I always get Hainanese chicken, because it's one of my family member's absolute favorite dish. They'll always judge the quality of the Malaysian restaurant based on that single dish alone. I personally don't like Hainanese chicken, but when I tasted it from this restaurant, I could tell it was so-so compared to the one from our usual restaurant. There wasn't much flavor, and the chicken did not taste as fresh as it should be. There's really nothing to hide behind if your Hainanese chicken isn't up to par, because it's a very simple dish in terms of flavor profile. The gold standard is a very smooth, silken texture that is slightly below room temperature. This restaurant didn't hit that standard. I ordered the clay pot noodles, which look a bit like instant noodles with an egg-based gravy. It wasn't bad, but lacked seasoning. The overwhelming taste was greasy egg, with nothing to balance it out. The roti canai was good. It was the best thing that I ordered for my meal. The roti was soft and flaky, and the curry dip was spicy. I'm a big spice lover, so if I can taste the heat, it'll probably be too spicy for most normal folks. Personally, the curry didn't make me break out in a sweat or anything, but I can faintly feel it on my tongue, which means it's likely to be plenty spicy for most everyone else. No other Malaysian restaurant I've tried had curry that I could feel anything from, so this means I should order curry dishes from here over anything else, if I should order again in the future. The char kueh teow was also fine, but I think I've had better elsewhere. It is lacking in seasoning, for sure. The belacan fried rice was bland and not spicy at all, even though it was marked as spicy on the menu. My family member who is unable to eat spicy foods at all didn't detect any spicy aspect to the dish, that's how not spicy it was. The restaurant was overall generous with the meat. Almost all the dishes I had had three to four shrimp included, and they were of good quality. The portions could have been bigger. They felt very small, because the containers were quite shallow. It's still enough for a meal, though. You just won't have much leftovers. My black sugar grass jelly soy milk drink was spilt, and I only received half of my drink as a result. It was fine, I enjoyed the black sugar taste. It's not too sweet, but there's a lot of ice. Not sure if I'll order from here again besides their curry dishes, but overall, it wasn't bad. It's just not the best Malaysian...

I sometimes order takeout from IPOH since they opened a few years ago but today was a new low for a declining restaurant.

I ordered half a Hainanese chicken, a sizzling tofu platter and stir fried string beans. The string beans were fine and was the best dish out of the three, nothing was wrong with it. 5/5

The Hainanese chicken is pretty much flavorless and surprisingly tough. You absolutely need both sauces that accompany the chicken in order to eat it. You can probably get bai chi zhi from any Chinese BBQ place and it'll be similar as long as you have the sauces. 3/5

The main issue was the tofu. It was fried to hell and back and was tough to eat and there was barely any tofu left inside of it! I've never seen tofu like this in my life. I don't even understand how they would pack and serve this to customers. Do they have no standards and no eyes to actually put this in a container and expect someone to pay for it. The tofu was absolutely inedible and was probably over fried by a magnitude of three. This dish was so bad it was comical. 0/5

When I called to let them know about their tofu dish the owner's response was to take my name and number down and then said they will remake it for me next time? No refund, no apology for that dish. They were almost skeptical that their visually impaired chef would over fry something and then send it out.

Ipoh can join the list of other Asian restaurants in Bensonhurst that do not have standards and slowly kill their business over the years but cutting corners. No wonder their rating on Google and Yelp has been...

Don’t go unless you are ready to pay a forced 20% gratuity by a server (regardless of table size or bill) who will walk to your table and make you extremely uncomfortable regardless of the quality of service they provide.

Long story - Delicious food. I have been going for 3 years since they opened. I recently had an experience where the service was close to terrible and for a $90 bill for 3 people I tipped $7 because of that. (2 days before I tipped 20% on a $100 bill) Another waitress that wasn’t even our server came and confronted us and told us to change our tip because $7 was not allowed as a tip. Extremely rude and disrespectful and told my friend that the minimum we needed to tip was 20% - which is not a law or a mandate yet she acted like we had no choice. This was extremely embarrassing, rude and disrespectful. I would highly not recommend going to this place if you do not want to be forced to pay 20% by a waitress who isn’t even your server. It says optional gratuity , if service is good I will tip that no problem but do not force me to pay 20% and then walk to our table and get upset and visibly confront us to change our tip. It ruined our evening experience. This was extremely disappointing and I can show how much in total I’ve spent in 3 years easily - I will never be going back. regardless the food is delicious and while I have been going here for 3 years it is disappointing that this one experience will make us never be able to eat this food but nothing is worth the amount of rudeness, disrespect and lack of tact this...