Penang Chinatown Restaurant

If there was a pseudo mainstream Asian cuisine lacking in Chinatown, it might be Malaysian. This is none more evident than the departure of Penang late last year, resulting in a total neighborhood Malaysian restaurant count at less than a handful. So much for options.
Penang had all the dishes anyone loving Malaysian food could want. There were some standout dishes, such as the Asam Laksa, a spicy noodle soup with a fiery broth, or even the obligatory Roti Canai, a must have appetizer in any Malaysian spot. The mee goreng, kari laksa, beef rendang are all staples that were consistently subpar, but nothing back breaking.
The space has since been converted to XO Taste (
), a huge win for fans of the XO chain but another blow to the Malay foodie scene, which hopefully is not completely on the decline. Rest in peace Penang Chinatown.

My bestie and her husband took us here once and overall it was a great meal. The atmosphere is typical malaysian/​thai restaurant style. My friend came here often I think so she was chatty with the waiter and waiter was pretty nice to us, it wasn’t busy that weeknight so he wasn’t rushing us or anything. I do have to note that I think their roti canai is not as fluffy or flavorful as some of the other malaysian places in chinatown.

I honestly have not tried more than 2 – 3 Malaysian food places in my life. Not because i don’t like Malaysian food, but because Penang always has me coming back. I’ve been eating from there since i was a little tyke, so it’s been 20 years of Penang in my life!
I think the roti canai has always been my go to dish. It’s always flakey and chewy. The curry is always fresh. There’s a great dish called Asam Laksa, which is my favorite entrée to get. It’s sweet, sour, and spicy with hints of seafood. The Hainam chicken is actually pretty darn good, considering it’s a Malaysian restaurant. Lastly, i always get the shaved ice.

I came here with my former boss. We got delicious crispy roti (Indian pancake) and yummy noodles (flat rice noodles with beef) and boboh cha cha (my favorite dessert with tapioca, taro, carrot and coconut milk – in case you’re curious). What more could we ask for? We had patient service and had an affordable meal. It came out to less than 25 dollars including tax and tip. It’s great for someone who wants a tasty dinner without making the wallet and belly leaving sad.

This place is a shadow of its former self. Before Nyonya, this was probably the busiest/​best Malaysian restaurant in Chinatown. I went back for the first time in years, and man, it’s so different. More than half the restaurant was empty. In fact, they didn’t even bother turning on the lights in the back half of the restaurant.
The tables were sticky and definitely didn’t feel clean. The ingredients used weren’t fresh (yellowish cilantro). Thankfully, the food itself was okay — it just didn’t feel like a nice dinner, if you know what I mean. It probably didn’t help that it was pretty hot inside (maybe they didn’t turn up the AC to conserve energy?).
We ordered the Hainanese chicken (good), fried intestines (not my thing), ma po tofu (fine), some egg-​y broad noodle dish (looked good, but I personally didn’t eat any), and basil beef (not bad). We also ordered five rices total, and a coconut juice. The total, including tax and tip, was $ 70. For a party of four, that’s not bad I guess.

Delicious food, big portions, and good price: what more could I ask for? My family and I were on vacation in New York and we were suprised to find a Penang in New York.
We ordered the Pad Thai, Penang Pork Chop, Chow Kueh Teow (Malaysian flat rice noodles with shrimp, squid, bean sprouts chives, eggs, soy sauce and chili paste), Masak Lemak (chicken with green & red peppers, onion, carrots in chili gravy), and for dessert: Shaved ice with red bean, corn, plam seeds, jelly, red rose syrup and milk.
The Pad thai did not taste like THE official pad thai at all. It had a citrus taste to it, but it was still good nevertheless. The Panang Pork Chop was very well-​seasoned and served with a large portion of rice. The Malaysian flat noodles were a bit over soy-​sauced, but still edible and delicious. The Masak Lemak was tasty, the chili gravy really completed the dish. WOOHOO the shaved ice is a MUST TRY. It’s only $ 3.50 and big enough for one-​person. To the people who have never tried shaved ice before, make sure you stir the ice and goodies at the bottom of the metal bowl well.
Check this Malaysian/​Thai restaurant out! It’s darn good!

The food was goooood! Plus, it was really cheap. I knew about Penang for years and am so sorry I waited this long to try their foods.
As soon as I walked in, I noticed this girl eating this noodle dish so I pointed to her dish and told the waiter that’s what I wanted. It was this pad thai with seafood in it; was also spicy which is an added plus.
My friend had this noodle in soup with a fish head. Now, I love to eat but choosing a fish head dish would just about be the last thing I’d order. I tried the noodles and soup — tasted awesome. She also ordered a roti which I just couldn’t stop picking at. It had this curry-​like flavor, very mild, with potatoes and chicken.
Including sodas, the total came to under $ 20.

Good food. Cheap as hell. Sticky tables. Nice service. And a cold passion fruit smoothie with lychee jellies on a warm day.
Saweeeet.

Wow, after reading all the negative reviews, I’m wondering if we all went to the same restaurant. I had a large party of 15 for a birthday dinner 3 weeks ago and the service was absolutely fine. The drinks came first, then we placed our orders which came promptly. We had some children in our group, so the waiters came quickly with extra napkins and utensils when we asked. The biggest plus at this location is that it is big and comfortable for a Chinatown restaurant. Everyone had plenty of elbow-​room and the tables weren’t pushed up against each other.
As for the food, it is not «knock you socks off» good, but very decent Malaysian food. Yes it is a chain, but this one is fine. Since I did all the ordering for our party, I had an appetizer platter consisting of roti canai and chicken and beef skewers. They were perfectly fine. We tried everything from beef rendang, to bee hoon to fried rice to their drinks, ranging from soy milk to grass jelly. All were excellent and we didn’t have a single complaint from anyone in our party. The only comment was that we ordered too much. The waiters were happy to give us plastic containers for our leftovers. Overall, this was a fine experience. Not too attentive, but enough service to say that this is in my top 2 Malaysian restaurants in Chinatown.

Couple of things to consider before you make a quick judgement based on all the negative reviews about this place.
1. Penang is a chain. Odly enough, not all of them are the same; either in flavor or quality.
2. Not every dish they make is stellar.
So with that said, in my personal opinion, this is one of the best locations to go. Secondly, you have to know what to order (VERY IMPORTANT)
Some things I highly recommend:
— Roti Kani
— Beef Rendang
— Salt & Pepper Squid
— Coconut Rice
What you can get better elsewhere:
— Pad Thai
— Any dish with a curry sauce
Not to say their Pad Thai or Green Curry Chicken is bad, it’s just not great. If this is your first time having Malaysian/Thai…then it’ll be mind-​blowing.
You want Kick-​ass Pad Thai ~~ See my «Room Service» review.
Otherwise, this place makes me happy for the specific dishes I go here for.

Totally disappointed today. I work in midtown and treked to chinatown for some good malaysian food. I order Capitan noodles that tasted like oily, greasy, beef chow fun, but not even good beef chow fun, because there was no flavor. it was just bland. can you imagine bland oily noodles? Also ordered Spicy Thai Chicken that tasted like the sauce had salsa. Never again will I make this trip.
Malay food in chinatown = bummer, Malay food in queens = winner.

someone wrote that the food is fresh, but i strongly disagree…
i went here tonight with my bf because we were hungry and didn’t feel like walking around looking for a place to eat. we go in here and it’s completely empty. weird, i thought. when our food came out, the lime in my noodle was brown. at first i didn’t notice the rotten color, but it was when no juice came out when i squeezed my lime. that’s when i realized that the food was probably not fresh. not only was i right, we both got stomach-​aches after we finished our meal. not a good feeling.
i will NEVER go back to this particular location again.

I had been to the Penang in the 80s on the east side once before and thought the food there was fine, so when I was walking around Chinatown looking for a place to eat I decided to give this one a try. What a big mistake! This place was absolutely disgusting. First of all, they started cleaning after we were seated. This was around 7pm and I don’t think I’ve been to any restaurant that cleans at that time. Furthermore, one bucket of water and no soap was used so the whole place smelled like dirty, stinky water. We were even asked to lift our feet so the floor beneath our table can be mopped. Making this whole situation worse they decided to close down the bathroom for cleaning and one of the reasons I decided to stop by was because I needed to use the loo.
If the ambiance wasn’t bad enough, the food certainly put this place into one star territory. I ordered the mee goreng and my dining companion ordered chicken rendang. Both were of bad quality and taste. The noodles were overcooked and stuck together and the sauce tasted really really bad. It was too salty and just really off tasting. The chicken was stringy and bony to the point where it was almost unedible. After our dishes arrived I looked around and noticed the restaurant was almost empty in Chinatown on a Saturday night, a definite sign that I should have gone somewhere else.

A chain of restaurants indeed. Malaysian/​Tahi cuisine. The quality of culinary is just average. The tables are large which fit our Asian group of 30 people into two tables. There is no elbow to elbow bumping, as we were all comfortable. The wait staff speaks Cantonese as well as Malay, and some other Southeast Asian languages. The Malaysian Satay of chicken and pork comes with some veggies where were good.
It’s a bit pricey of $ 124.00 for our one table consisting of nine without drinks. Penang serves meals family style which are shared platters. At the end of the meal prior before the bill comes this restaurant does not offer fresh oranges or fortune cookies unlike most Asian restaurants.

Part of a chain of restaurants, Penang’s décor is perhaps the most interesting feature of the restaurant. Its wood banisters and decorations combined with some dark lighting and kitsch on the walls makes for an interesting visual experience. Sadly the culinary one does not live up to the hype.
I’ve gone now and then over the years and had a variety of dishes including their curry beef (no bite and tough meat), Pad Thai (over greasy) and fried shrimp (no flavor). I chalked up the problems to flukes the first few times. But over the years they’ve failed to impress me.
Service is good, and the price is okay but there are far better Malaysian places in Chinatown.
I have some friends who think this place is really good and like to use it as the «default» Malaysian restaurant in Chinatown, but for the life of me I cannot figure out why.

Having just dined at another branch of Penang in New Jersey, my family and I were interested to try out this branch. We did confirm that the same family owns both restaurants.
The menus and decoration wasn’t quite as nice as the branch in New Jersey but crucially the food was also a notch below. The char koay teow was nice but the pipa duck was dry and the sauce too sticky and salty.
The service was indifferent but maybe the service in Chinatown restaurants the world over is the same!
Could do better.

Don’t even get me started about THIS place.
So the first time I went here was for my friend’s birthday. It was nice. Food was good, waiters were decent, water was clean and free. Like it’s supposed to be.
So we had a good time, and that was the end of that.
THe next time I went was for another friend’s birthday. Our usual place of indulgence was packed so me being the most familiar with Chinatown, took them to this place.
And it just went downhill from there.
When we first stepped in the co-​owner (I guess she was the co-​owner since she had this obnoxious air about her, like she owned the place.) came and seated us.
How did we get seats?
Because it was like a freakin ghost town inside. There was one table and us. Considering this was a decent sized restaurant, this was bad. And ironically, our usual hangout is a thrid the size of Penang. Yes, very sad.
So anyway, we got seated and started to order. Since not all of us were hungry, we didn’t order much. We orderd two Roti Canal and a hainese chicken over rice. The lady looked at us skeptically and gave us all this look. But she didn’t say anything and took our order.
Then I asked her for water. And she gave me this irritated look and replied oh so rudely,
«You have tea. Drink that.»
I gave her my best «WTFBETCH?» look, but didn’t push it. It was my friend’s birthday and I didn’t want to argue with her. So I poured myself a cup and sat there with my fist clenched.
Then the dish came and I swear to God, my eyes bulged out.
Look, I’ve seen small portions in my life. Hell, even teacup portions.
But I swear to God, the Hainese Chicken dish was freakin’ tiny. I mean I know you didn’t get that much but, holy shit.
There was like 5 pieces of chicken and out of that five, three were bones. My soul nearly died.
THe Roti canai was fine but not memorable. At all.
And that lady has the nerve to watch us as we eat. By then I was infuriated. I swear the chopsticks would’ve broke cause I was holding them THAT tight.
And my friend wasn’t fairing that well too.
We kept whispering how we might slice her if stares too long. And not only that, the workers were throwing dirty looks at my friend like she was going to steal their nasty chopsticks.
Regardless, I felt angry even paying for the meal. So instead of not paying, I didn’t leave a tip.
Guess what? They wouldn’t let us leave without giving a tip. By then I was about to explode. SO I left a dollar. And I thought that was a dollar too much.
But before we left my friend took a handful of their business cards and just as we left, she ripped them and threw it out infront of the store.
Needless to say, food quality and service are not even remotely acceptable.
This restaurant gets NO recommendations from me. In fact, if you pass it just keep walking even if you are famished. The bakery down the street is better than this dump.

Penang is kind of an intriguing concept because it’s Malaysian cuisine and I’m not familiar with many places where you can enjoy that in New York. Well, Penang certainly isn’t one of them anyway.
The food is not consistently good or bad — It is, however, consistently bizarre. My friend and I still refer to the time we ordered the «chicken with shrimp» and received (I kid not here) a gelatinous, warm shrimp pâté covered with crispy chicken skin. We were kind of freaked out because we thought perhaps we had ordered incorrectly, or misread the menu, but we did not. The problem seems to be in two areas: the first of which is that Penang doesn’t label its menu clearly enough (maybe descriptions on some of the more «adventurous» items would clear things up) and the second of which is that they seem to enjoy putting chicken skin on everything.
I say this because when we went back for the second time, we ordered a beef dish that came out with chicken skin on it again. Maybe they think it’s funny to freak us out — Who really knows?!
Service is good, although as I said, perhaps the servers should articulate what is what to patrons. The atmosphere is, in my opinion, typical for an Asian-​type restaurant and I’ve always seen this place moderately crowded, so I guess it’s popular. They do have take-​away service and a counter in the front from which you can order food to go, so maybe that’s more worthwhile if you stick with what’s simple.

I brought a co-​worker originally from St Louis MO for lunch here a couple of years ago. We had the Roti Canai, Hainanese Chcken, satay, beef and chicken and some Spicy Squid. She loved it.
An old friend of mine arrived to visit with his new wife and ask me if I can bring them to a good Malaysian place… took them for lunch here and ordered the same things. They loved it too.
The place is nicely decorated with the bamboo motif and service is fast and the prices are very affordable but since there is now an array of Malaysian restaurants near my neighborhood I have never set foot at this place again.

5 stars for the Malaysian dishes.
2 to 3 stars for everything else.
We haven’t had the luck of finding a good Thai restaurant in NYC yet, but at least we’ve been blessed with the Malaysian fare at Penang.
Penang has been our favorite Malaysian restaurant for over 6 years now. The food has stayed consistently delicious. A bit on the sweet side, but the noodle soups and curries are bursting with flavors. All quite intense (at least for our tongues!) — hot, sour, sweet and creamy.
However…here’s what we’ve discovered. You must stick to the traditional MALAYSIAN dishes on the menu. FORGET the Thai or Chinese entrees.
Our favorites:
* Penang Udang Mee and Penang Asam Laksa — the soups are so flavorful, and the noodles are excellent in texture. Incredibly chewy!
* Asam fish head — takes 20 minutes of prep, but SO worth it! (Confession: I scoop up the grease floating on top…)
* Seafood lemon grass soup — like coconut-​based tomyum
* Hainanese chicken — the classic
* Seafood scramble egg chow fun — okay, this isn’t exactly Malaysian, but it’s yummy!
Other traditional Malaysian dishes include:
* Appetizers: Baby oyster omelet and Pandan ayam
* Noodles: Penang char kway teow and Mee siam
* Rendangs: Beef and lamb chop
* Veggies: belacan sauce and sambal eggplant
* Desserts: ice kacang and cendol
We’ve been very happy with the service, too. The guy (presumably the owner/​manager) is very chill and attentive to our needs.
CASH ONLY.
SUM: Yay for Malaysian cuisine!