Jaya 888

This is my favorite place in Chinatown and every friend I’ve taken there goes back. Great dishes include the Indian pancake. The dumpling soup is the best you’ll find. The spicy string beans are excellent. I love all the desserts but the peanut pancake is something you’ll want to try. I’ve been going here for many years and know many area restaurants and strongly suggest you try Jaya.

Average food for slightly above average price. I ordered the malaysian string bean lunch special and it was rather tasteless and oily. It smelled better than it tasted. The young tofu noodle soup was decent. The noodles and curry soup were yummy but some of the young tofu were kind of burnt. Had no complaints for the chicken broth rice!

Went there with a friend the other night to celebrate his getting a new job. I ordered the Nasi Lemak and he got the Indian pancake with chicken curry and stir fried noodles. He consumed all of it while I ate all of mine. He portion size is just right. Not feeling too full or still hungry. Kinda spicy but came out really well. Weren’t too many people in the restaurant so conversation was loud and clear. Maybe weather was chilly so not many people stopped by. Lady got us water whenever we asked. Food is good. Gave her a good tip. Will definitively be back to this restaurant the next time I am in the area.

Food was great but the service was horrible we had to ask for our hot tea water etccc finally when the food came the lady ignored us she was more attending to her asian customers didnt ask us how was the food or if we needed anything basically we where on our own anyhoot didnt matter i was with great company and it made up for it finally when we where done we got up went to the register to ask for the check. smh really lol we just laughed about it and kept it moving wont be goin back.

Places has gone down in quality… rent is too damn high maybe, or did the owners change? either way this restaurant has really gone downhill from the days when I used to come here in high school to hang out with friends.
I ordered the nasi lemak and the salt fish fried rice. both dishes were incredibly mediocre. There really is no other way to describe it, both dishes tasted incredibly bland and really did not offer much in terms of flavor, the nasi lemak was incredibly sparse as far as the chicken was concerned, which was incredibly disappointing to me.
for Malay food in Chinatown you could definitely do better than this place

Just about the trashiest chicken wings ever. Each piece was bruised, ripped off in various places, bones broken, and a mess. I will never order wings from here again. I paid something like 8.75 for something that is basically inedible. Would you eat wings that are swollen, black and blue? I don’t think so. If they fuck up on something so simple, then what does that say about their kitchen?

Awesome sauce. Tastes better than the other Malaysian restaurant nearby… There’s been less and less in Chinatown, so glad there’s still something good around. btw, try to stick with the Malay options. No, pad thai and general tsaos chicken is not Malay…

Was a bit weary because there were no customers inside but a few groups came in during the meal. Roti canai was good. Hokkien noodles were good too, nice portion size and not just all noodle volume good amount of the meat and seafood and vegetables. Prices are cheap too.

I really like this place. Even if it is not the best Malay food I have ever eaten, it is decently good, decently proportioned, and decently priced.
I had the Mee Siam and Curry Beef noodle soup.

Such a delicious, quick, open & airy place to enjoy a pad Thai with friends & family! Shrimp Pad Thai & Ginger Fish were excellent! They were also accommodating when we asked for mild not spicy! Also easy to get to from the subway from Battery Park. Nice!

The portions were not very big. The roti canai tasted weird but the Kyaw Teow was good.

Shouldn’t have ordered the pad thai, but I had a moment of weakness. Too salty and dark a sauce, not enough acidity to balance the heavy fish sauce.
The whole place felt a little sticky, but the bathroom wasn’t as bad as I was expecting.

A hankering for Malaysian food brought me here during my lunch hour. The service was friendly but the quality of food was way below par. The soup that came with the lunch special was literally a bowl of water with 3 pieces of cabbage floating in it (I agree it was cabbage soup but seriously!?). It didn’t look appealing at all, so I didnt even taste it. I got the kungpao chicken lunch special but the chicken was quite undercooked, almost raw. It wasn’t a pleasant experience trying to eat that!
The roti canai that my colleague ordered was good, definitely one of the better options available here. The veg spring rolls we shared were crispy but not very flavorful. Even though the food came out fast and the place seemed like a decent lunch option in the area, It was a disappointing experience and I don’t think I’ll ever be back.

I was so excited when they opened again but the food was barely average. We got the beef rendang– it was OK. Tasted a bit meaty. Also ordered the jumbo prawns– again nothing special. Oh and the sambal– worst sambal I have ever had. Where was the spice!!! Gotta stick to my indonesian restaurants for the authentic sambal terasi.
A couple of us joked it was better when their cleanliness rating was low. Use to be one of my favorites and now I will not be returning.
I am giving it a 2 stars because their service was great! Which is a huge change from last time.
Much better malaysian food at Malaysia 888.

Alright so I legitimately JUST made a Unilocal account so I could write a review for this restaurant. I am a native New Yorker, and for years I had been going to this other Malaysian food place in Chinatown for my Malaysian food fix. HOWEVER, my mom had found this place a little while ago and would only go to pick up one or two things for dinner at home. One day she decided that we should try out their food for a regular sit down meal and let me tell you something: It was amazing.
The roti prata is always the perfect amount of flaky and soft. The satay is flavorful with a harmonious amount of heat. They have a myriad of great noodle options. The veggies are plentiful, crunchy, and fresh. Their fish is oh so tasty. And their curry… is the best curry that I have ever had, ever. It is rich, but not too heavy and has a truly delicious flavor.
The atmosphere of the restaurant is also pleasant and authentic. It is air conditioned, but not too cold, the staff is attendant, but not pushy, and it feels like a real restaurant would in Malaysia or Singapore. But don’t let that last comment scare away anyone for fear of it being TOO foreign because the music they play is definitely an American music station that plays anything from Michael Jackson to Gangnam Style to Beyonce to The Beatles.
Now whenever I go to Jaya there are quite a few customers in there but not nearly as many as they deserve. I want people to know that they are there, a little walk off of Canal St., and a meal there will not be disappointing. The prices are as good as they are going to get with the quality and amount of food that you’ll get.
My personal recommendation would definitely be the beef curry with hor fun noodles

I used to love this place when I worked in Chinatown before they re-​opened. I do like the current modifications and they have some good food but the one thing leading me to write this review is how mad I am regarding my check. I got my food and my app etc, everything was fine. But when it came time for the check, it came out to ~$ 13.00, but the card minimum is $ 15.00. Okay fine, but if I include the tip, it would be more than $ 15. The server takes it and goes okay, that’s fine, sure! But the manager is a strict «No! $ 15!» Okay, sure fine. But any establishment or even deli with good service will waive those few dollars. If they had done that, I would have left another dollar or two in cash. However, the point is, that they were particularly grimy about this and requested I either go to the bank a block away after leaving an ID (who the hell wants to leave their ID in Chinatown where, no offense and I am Chinese myself, scammers are rampant???) or to order a drink to go. At this point, I’m a bit impatient. This is my lunch hour. I have a meeting to go back to. It’s not like I have all the time to spend in the world. So then I reluctantly order a Longan ice to go, which I request to not be too sweet. When I get it, 5 – 10 minutes later, it is too sweet. Then I wait another ten minutes for them to charge my card but by then I really need to be leaving!!! So I go up to the counter, but apparently their credit card machine has «no line» or something akin to «no service.» WTH! Why did they leave me waiting for so long then only for me to find out when I go up to the counter? So they retry it a few more times etc. and request I give them another card. etc. The point is, by now I am really frustrated and the nostalgia I originally felt when I first entered Jaya 888 that resembled the original Jaya from my adolescence has dissipated. Actually, its been negated by pure frustration because when I tell the manager that most establishments would have just let me charge the 13+2 dollars tip despite their card minimum when I was leaving, she was like «no! no! No! 15!» even after knowing that I had waited forever for them to charge my card after ordering and waiting for the additional item to meet the card minimum.
Some of you may think that it is entitled of me to think that establishments should just waive their card minimum, but it is definitely NOT in good taste to disagree strongly and with such attitude after the customer has had the aforementioned experience. Just to be clear, I was pleasant and agreeable throughout the experience and still civil when I told the grimy manager my suggestion. Ugh!

Got parking right across the street and a table at the doorway to make sure that I could run out to stop the meter maid from doing their job… now on to the food. We had the Ginger Beef, Vegetable Fried Rice, Salt n Pepper Shrimp, Mango and Papaya Smoothie. The service was good and so was the food, overall satisfying experience!!!

#For the price, this place is good and #cheap. I wouldn’t say it’s great, but it’s a great #deal.

Looks like this place reopened?
Tried the Curry Mee, which was spicy and very rich and flavorful. Decently priced, great staff.

Place reopened under Jaya 888 incorporated. 8 is luck in Chinese so I assume 888 is for triple luck? Anyway, got some quick takeout from here.
The menu here is bigger than New Malaysian and it’s a bit closer to the main strip. It’s also right across the street from a bunch of Vietnamese restaurants and a pub so it’s an interesting area.
Woman in front/​the staff are very nice. Nicer than most of the other places I have been to in Chinatown.
Roti Telur: Pretty solid, gravy with it had a good amount of coconut/​spices. The bread’s flavor was OK as well as the portion size.
Beef Rendang: Nice and big portion, sauce wasn’t nearly as dark as some other places but otherwise, the flavors were fine. I like how this place also has Rendang over rice for 8 or 9 bucks, who can beat that in this area when a full size (like I got) is 14 – 17.
There are definitely better Malaysian places, but it hit the spot. It’s probably closer to a 3.5 but the wide menu variety as well as the nice wait staff give it a 4.