***Update: Ownership has changed and food has gone way downhill***
Taste Good Malaysian Cuisine 8218 45th Avenue, Elmhurst, NY 11373 is a rather shabby looking place. They serve on plastic dishware and give you water in Styrofoam cups. The smell of incense (which we hate) competes with a bit of fishiness. Despite all that glory, it’s on my go-to list now. Starting with the Roti Canai, the surroundings faded away, and we were engrossed in the flaky layers with a soft stretchy inside. Dip by dip into the warm curry, we were ready to close our eyes and just let the taste buds do all the work.
The Petai Belecan arrived next, Malaysian Broad Beans blistered in hot oil and covered with a shrimp paste sauce. The generous portion of shrimp paste sauce can be thrown on top of rice too. I’d eat it on top of anything. (Don’t worry. I took left-overs home.)
If you’re going to get rice, don’t bother with plain white rice when you can have chicken rice here. It’s so fragrantly chicken-y.
The Dry Curry Beef Rendang just melts in your mouth, some of the softest meat I’ve ever eaten. It could have been a little hotter but the noodles were piping hot, and the flavor was so concentrated without being overly salty. We were really getting excited about how flavorful everything was.
The Hokkien Udang Mee is a noodle soup with an impressively concentrated shrimp broth, without being at all fishy. It’s not thickened but there’s still a velvety feel to it. While there’s shrimp, pork, fish cake, and boiled egg, those are just extra toppings and nothing really matters beyond the amazing broth. The fried onions do melt in nicely though. I will have wicked cravings for this all winter for sure.
Of course, we ordered too much, but we took left-overs home, and this meal that was enough for 3 to 4 only cost $32 (including tax and tip). It’s a bit out of the way in Elmhurst but there’s a Hong Kong Supermarket right next door for convenient shopping afterwords. We noticed better prices at this supermarket too so Taste Good Malaysian Cuisine paired with supermarket shopping may become a regular weekend outing for us.
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I looooooooove Malaysian/Singaporean food. Everything you had looks mouth watering. What a great meal!
Gaga, I love it too and there aren’t many places to enjoy it so I’m going to have to come back here again and again!
those don’t look like petai, but more like regular string beans. petai (or stinkbean) are kinda lima-bean sized/shaped with a distinctive bitter taste; had them in plenty of malay places, also indonesian. never ate at taste good but the writeup is plenty nice! in the area, I have gotten takeout from Coco and had boring food from penang on the other side of the plaza. will try out taste good next time; the place gets some decent reviews and indeed, the decor is usually described as bad.
Avisualperson, I was wondering about that because that’s what it says on their menu but it did seem like string bean to me. Since I’m not familiar with Petai, I gave them the benefit of the doubt.