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Food guide

How to find good Malaysian food

Malaysian food is Malay, Chinese and Indian cooking that has been in the same place long enough to become one cuisine. A single menu will run from a coconut rice breakfast to a Hokkien noodle stir-fry to a South Indian flatbread, and all three will be authentic.

What separates a good one from a bad one

  • Roti canai flipped and stretched to order — Layered, flaky, served with dhal and curry. It has to be made fresh; reheated roti is leathery.
  • Sambal made in house — Chilli, shrimp paste, tamarind, pounded. It is the backbone of the cuisine and a jarred version is immediately obvious.
  • Wok hei on the fried noodles — Char kway teow needs a fierce burner. Without the char it is just noodles in sauce.
  • Laksa broth with body — Curry laksa should be rich with coconut and shrimp paste; asam laksa sour with tamarind and fish. They are different dishes and a kitchen should distinguish them.
  • Belacan on the menu — Fermented shrimp paste. Its presence means the kitchen is cooking properly — and it is worth knowing about if you avoid shellfish.

What to order

  • Nasi lemak — Coconut rice with sambal, anchovies, peanuts, egg and cucumber. The national breakfast.
  • Roti canai — With dhal and chicken curry for dipping.
  • Curry laksa — Or asam laksa if you want the sour one. Ask which they do better.
  • Char kway teow — Flat noodles with prawn, egg, Chinese sausage and chives, hard-fried.
  • Hainanese chicken rice — Poached chicken with rice cooked in the stock, with ginger-scallion and chilli sauces.

Where to find Malaysian food

Open listings put 146 Malaysian restaurants across the US. These are the cities and campuses with the most of them.

Cities with the most

New York, NY 18 Houston, TX 6 Seattle, WA 4 Milpitas, CA 4 Chicago, IL 4 San Jose, CA 3 San Francisco, CA 3 Pleasanton, CA 3 Philadelphia, PA 3 Atlanta, GA 3

Campuses with the most within a mile

NYU 9 The New School 6 Pace University 6 Baruch 6 BMCC 4 Jefferson 3 Seattle U 3 FIT 3 Yale University 2 Seattle Central 2

A few to start with

Counts are listings in Overture Maps open data (September 2026), counted by the town in each address. Independent places only in the examples above, and they are a starting point rather than a ranking.

How Savor Scout looks for it

Malaysian searches read for named dishes and for belacan and sambal language, and treat the Malay-Chinese-Indian spread on one menu as a positive rather than a sign of a scattered kitchen. Reviews mentioning wok hei or roti made to order are weighted heavily.

Find Malaysian food near you →

Looking in a particular city?

Each of these opens Savor Scout with the location already set, so you can say what you want and it searches from there. It covers 1,000 US cities in total — these are simply the largest.

All 1,000 cities →

When you might want this

What to eat when nothing sounds good Where to take friends visiting from out of town Where to eat late at night