Malay Cuisine at Nyonya

Walked around Chambers Street.

 To satisfy a friend's pho craving, we went to Chinatown originally looking to go into Nam Son, a pretty authentic restaurant for Vietnamese cuisine. We picked a poor day for Nam Son because it was packed and a lot of people waiting. Instead we changed our mind to go for Shanghainese until I said out of the blue that I wanted to try Malay food. My friend remembered seeing a Malay restaurant on the way so we went there instead. It is called "Nyonya" located near Little Italy on Grand Street. From my previous research, the manga Addicted to Curry, I learned that nyonya is a cuisine conceived from the fusion of Chinese and Malay flavors. It was packed with people as well, but there were empty seats for us.
The lighting is extremely dim at Nyonya. It is dark and supposedly trendy to mimic a bar setting. I personally do not like the darkness. I would like to see my food clearly. Even the guy sitting next us remarked about the dark setting. We ordered a Hainanese chicken with rice to share. I got myself a Penang Assam Laksa and my friend got a Prawn Mee. Hands down the chicken was the best part of our lunch. Hainanese chicken is light in flavor, but full of moisture. It came with a spicy and tart dipping sauce that went incredibly well with the meat. If you are not a fan of spicy, the soy sauce base that the chicken was in is also very tasty. Both of us ordered noodles in soup except she got egg noodles and I had rice noodles. Both are spicy soup bases as well. She gave me one of her shrimp to try and it was overdone. Not only that, the shrimp itself wasn't too fresh probably. It felt like one of those frozen shrimps forgotten in a fridge.

Hainanese chicken with rice

Prawn mee

Penang Assam Laksa

I wanted to try a lot of things, but I settled for a assam laksa which is really popular throughout Southeast Asia. The soup base is spicy and sour, but this one was really sour. I couldn't take the acidity. I'm starting to suspect that it's not suppose to be this sour. Research online tells me that the acidity comes from tamarind. I know tamarind is really acidic, but when used properly can taste good. The spiciness level however I could handle. The soup is also fishy which some people may not like. It is because it has fish sauce in it. Fish sauce doesn't smell pleasant, but I really like the taste of it. South Asian cuisine isn't complete without a bit of fish sauce. I was disappointed with my laksa because of the portions. There was more soup than noodles and not a lot of ingredients. It was basically just rice noodles in a spicy sour soup topped with pineapple and cucumber. All that for $7.75. I expected a bit more you know. If it weren't for the fish sauce, this was practically a vegetarian dish. Without that order of chicken, I don't think I would have walked out of Nyonya full.

This place got a lot of positive reviews on yelp. I do admit their prices are affordable and they have friendly service. I won't come back next time because I didn't like the food too much. I'm sure there are other Malay places to try in the future.