Susan C.
Yelp
4.25 stars and rounding up, reasons below. Having lived in Singapore and Malaysia for combined to be a couple years, and having eaten a range from meh to amazing food there, I must say this place is pretty authentic.
When I ate here yesterday I tried:
1) Prawn Ramen with soup $18 : came with 5 prawns with heads on, fish cake, bean sprouts, pork lardons. The heads are where a lot of the flavor come from, hence better to keep them on. The prawn broth while not the best I've had, has a stronger, more robust flavor than all the places where I've recently had Malaysian food in NYC. This broth is very time intensive and costly to make, requiring a ton of prawns and prawn heads simmered for hours and strained for a rich, shrimp-y flavor. Most restaurants don't have the time or energy to do this dish justice. It's one of those broths that looks deceptively simple but requires skills, resources and experience to get right, similar to how we think of Japanese ramen broth.
2) Dry Signature Torched Sesame Pork Rib Ramen $22 : this is one of the richest, most decadent bowl of noodles I've ever had in a food court. The two pork ribs were huge with a very generous dollop of roe on top, a soft boiled marinated egg, a fair amount of noodles below, served with a scrumptious sesame sauce, a small clump of sambal (hot, spicy prawn paste). Ugh so good. The soft boiled egg was perfect, a slightly gooey soft center. Those ribs...(drool). A bit on the richer, heavier side like I mentioned but well worth it..
For both items above, I appreciated the mix of thicker yellow noodles and thinner rice noodles. This detail is something that's common locally in Malaysia/Singapore/Indonesia but rarely seen stateside.
A lot of the complaints about Urban Hawker and this stall are about the prices which I must agree is more than I'm used to paying and I kinda wish this was not in the center of midtown so prices might be slight better and less touristy. However they do make a more compelling case for themselves given the amount of protein included. Prices are comparable to other take-away spots in the area (people pay $15 for a salad at sweetgreen and that involves minimal cooking, and where adding a protein costs $2-3), or less expensive than any sit down restaurant in the area. I feel bc these food stalls focus on specific items, they are more flavorful and authentic than most other Malaysian and Singaporean restaurants in NYC just bc most restaurants do a range of dishes and aren't honing in on a specialty. To begin with, there aren't that many distinct restaurants only serving Malaysian, Indonesian and Singaporean food*, (though that number is growing). Also we're used to valuing certain cuisines above others and paying less for certain types of ethnic food. And yes you can pay for an airplane ticket go to the actual country and pay $6-8 SGD or even less 10-12 ringgit for a bowl but that's not the going rate in NYC where they have to account for the higher cost of importing ingredients and the much higher cost of labor. For myself I'm simply ecstatic that there's finally a relatively authentic spot like this to come enjoy some prawn mee. Hope they do well so I can come back for more!
*I list Singapore last bc most of Singaporean food is derivative of Malaysian food. After all, they used to be one country until about 57 years ago.
