Back to the missus and my trip to New York, last October. When last seen in the city, we were eating Italian dinner at the since-closed Foul Witch with a very old friend of mine. Lunch was with someone I’ve known for a much shorter time and, until this lunch, only online, Krishnendu Ray, professor of food studies at NYU and a renowned scholar of the culture and sociology of immigrant cuisines and restaurants in the United States. We’d interacted online for several years prior and had talked about getting together in person for a while—it finally happened on this trip, and a very nice encounter it was. He had asked us what kinds of foods we were most interested in eating and, keeping our other meal plans in mind, we had suggested South East Asian food of one kind or the other. He then furnished a list of possibilities, from which we chose Laut, a Malaysian restaurant located right off Union Square. Here’s how it went.

Before I get to the meal, let me register some confusion about the restaurant’s history. At the time that we’d picked Laut for lunch I had seen references online to their having been in 2011 the first Malaysian restaurant to earn a Michelin star. This much is not in doubt. But when I went to look up how long they’d held it (for one more year), I came across seemingly conflicting accounts of who owned it when and who the chef is/was. Julia Moskin’s brief review in the Times in 2009 refers to owners “Kathy Wong and Michael Bong” who “grew up in Malaysia” but not to a chef. This 2012 blog review, post-Michelin, refers to “[O]wner Salil Mehta, who’s operated the restaurant for a few years now” and to “chef Tommy Lai, who has been running the kitchen for more than two years now” and who “was born and raised in Malaysia”. Okay, so Mehta must have taken over the restaurant soon after 2009. But in this article on a Malaysian site I found a reference to a CBS tv segment in which he seems to refer to himself as the chef. I found that segment on Instagram. He does seem to represent himself as the/a chef in it: he’s clad in an apron and does a demonstration in the kitchen and there’s no sign of any other chefs. He is also referred to as the chef of Laut in this Resy feature from 2022. Whither Tommy Lai? The CBS clip does note that Mehta took over the restaurant in 2010. So confusion about his role aside, the timeline of ownership seems clear.

Not so fast.

You see, there’s this Malaysian site which refers to Michael Bong as the owner at the time of the star, complete with a statement from him: “”We’re honored and thrilled to be recognized with a MICHELIN Star and to be in the same category as so many other fine restaurants around the world,” said Michael Bong, owner of Laut.” (The article, confusingly, has a 2023 date stamp, i.e 12 years after the star was awarded.)

Doubtless all of this has a simple explanation and I concede that it is not the most interesting mystery What of the food? Well, it was tasty but I don’t know that it was any more interesting than the saga above.

We were a party of four and got everything to share. To start, chicken satay and a Thai mango salad. (The restaurant, in case, you’re wondering has a pan-South East Asian menu.) Of these the mango salad was more successful, though I can’t say it was better than the mango salads at the better Thai restaurants in St. Paul. The chicken satay, however, was not as good as those at the better Thai restaurants in St. Paul, being overly, cloyingly sweet. The roti canai was a big improvement. The roti (what North Indians would call paratha) was excellent as was the chicken curry (which was served sans any meat).

Next to arrive were the curry laksa and beef rendang. The menu, by the way, gives some of the dishes dramatic titles. The roti canai is billed as “Iconic Roti Canai” and likewise we had on the table, “Ultimate Curry Laksa” and “The Famous Rendang”. Well, it was not the ultimate curry laksa, which is not to say that it wasn’t tasty. Once again, it was a bit too sweet. The rendang, however, was very good (we got it with beef). Finally, an order of Hainanese roast chicken (which is not hyped at all). This was tasty as well but, again, nothing to get very excited about.

I don’t know what the Malaysian restaurant scene in New York is like beyond Laut, but I assume it’s more developed than it was in 2011 and 2012 when the restaurant held its Michelin stars. It’s hard to imagine that any Asian restaurant at this level would get a star in 2026. By which I mean only that it’s just a solid (mostly) Malaysian restaurant that does a creditable job with the greatest hits but not very much more. Of course, the Malaysian restaurant scene in Minnesota is not very developed at all. This is why we’d picked Laut of the possibles for that lunch. Last I checked, Peninsula was still not open for dine-in and so the prospect of a good Malaysian meal was hard to pass up. And this was a good Malaysian meal. Of course, the food was not in any case the centerpiece of the meal—that was the conversation and that was very good.

Okay, for a look at the menu and everything we ate, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see what’s coming next.

Service was solid. Prices were what you’d expect in Manhattan: $11 for the roti canai, $16 for the chicken satay, everything else in the low-mid $30s. I can’t tell you how much the final bill was as I didn’t get to see it.

If you can shed any light on who the actual chef of Laut is or has been over the years, write in below (or drop me a line). Ditto if you have recommendations for other Malaysian places we could try on future trips to the city.

Okay, just one more report to come from this October trip. That will be of dinner eaten across the river in Newark and will go up next Sunday. Before that, one more report each from Bombay, St. Paul and Seoul. And tomorrow, another whisky review.