New Penang Garden

My husband and I wanted to try something different so we went for singaporean cuisine. He ordered the penang prawn mee ($ 8.95) while I ordered the seafood curry laksa ($ 8.95). I didn’t know what I was thinking ordering the seafood curry laksa because 1) i’m more of a carnivore than a seafood person, and 2) I really don’t care much for curry. Needless to say, my husband ended up finishing my order while i devoured a good portion of his penang prawn mee. We also shared an order of the special shatin chicken ($ 9.95), a deep fried marinated baby chicken. Overall, food and service were just okay.

This place is starting to go downhill I think. My dad ordered to go for the chow kway teow and the pad thai. The chow kway teow was flavorless and the noodles stuck together in one big clump. The pad thai only had a little bit of flavor and also generally stuck together in clumps. This used to be my favorite place for this stuff but I think I may be falling in love with Banana Leaf instead. Sad.

FOOD: My favorites so far is their rendang fish. Teow noodles were decent too. Portions seem a good size for to go and it took 8 minutes for our food to be ready for to go. So fast! $ 25 minimum for credit cards is what the sign says behind the cash register. They have pre set combo dinners available that seem like a pretty good deal ranging from $ 17.95 per person on the low end.
INSIDE: Quite nice with a sitting area in the front that is nicely decorated. See photos for how the inside looks like. Big tables available for large groups.
OUTSIDE: Parking is an outside lot shared with other businesses on the Asian side of McCarthy Ranch. Menu is outside to view to decide if you want to eat here. Photos on the windows of dishes.
Overall I liked this place and definitely will be coming back. Sign says they’re open seven days a week until midnight.

Waited too long to get to the order. Food took long to come to the table. Food was ok. I think they need to add more people for service. Poor servers were over loaded.

This is a simple mom and pop style Malaysian restaurant in Milpitas square. The food is fair at best and I have had better at Banana leaf nearby.

* Open Late
* Yummy Food [ you can pick the fish you wanna eat :) ]
* With Beer
* Great Service
* Huge restaurant
My tummy thanks me whenever i go there.

I am a fan of this place because of the yummy dishes they have to offer. When I am feeling vegetarian, this is my go to place. It is tucked in the corner of a very busy plaza. The place inside is pretty spacious and the service is not so bad.
I love the fried eggplant here. It is so yummy and flavorful, that I crave it at times. Everything here is very flavorful. They have non-​vegetarian options and that is also yummy too. We would also get the salt ‘n pepper fish, which has a kick to it. So yummy especially with the vegetables we get.
They offer coconut rice, I personally don’t get it but when we do come here at least one of us orders it over plain steam rice.
The desert, fried banana ice cream… heaven! So yummy, either you can get the fried banana’s and have mango ice cream on top or you have have fried ice cream, which is a ball of fried goodness with chocolate drizzle and when you break it open… ice cream oozes out. A must try here.

I went looking around for crappy restaurants to eat at, and I think I finally found it!
Dirty? Check!
Small meat portions? Check!
So-​so customer service? Right on!
Mediocre taste? Score!
Diarrhea? Still waiting!
The hainan chicken was shitty at best. I think you would do better to have peeled some chicken McNuggets and boiled it in broth instead.

The 5 stars is for the food not so much the customer service which runs about 3.5−4 stars depending on the workers’ moods.
The roti is really good. The pineapple fried rice is good too. The strawberry Peking spareribs are a MUST TRY (amazing with white rice). The egg tofu vegetable dish is good too. The soy milk drink is good but I always ask for a little extra sugar. The mango sticky rice is good too!

This is such a long overdue review for this place. My friend suggested coming here for lunch, and since I hadn’t had Malaysian food in ages, I agreed. I was quite surprised to see the 3-​star average rating on Unilocal.But I also have mixed feelings about this place. The appetizers, like my friend said, were amazing! The main dishes were alright but nothing special. Prices are reasonable. My 4-​star rating comes mostly from the appetizers. Here’s what we ordered (beware.this was way too much for 2 people… haha):
— Roti Canai: This appetizer was my favorite! This was actually my first time trying roti (sadly enough), but I absolutely loved it! The texture of the roti pancake is very thin… VERY thin. And very crispy. But it goes so well with the sauce. Next time I come here I’m ordering at least two orders of this.
— Satay Chicken: Another appetizer – this one comes with 5 skewers. It also comes with vegetables and sauce to eat the chicken with. The chicken was so good! Not dry at all and it had so much flavor! Super impressed and I highly recommend trying this!
— Curry Ox Tail Clay Pot: This was a very interesting dish. SO much flavor, and the ox tail was very tender. It’s pretty oily, though, so beware of that, but I really enjoyed this main dish. You don’t really get a mix of vegetables though as the menu indicates. It comes only with string beans and okra. And I’m not a huge fan of okra… but even then, I really liked this curry dish. The level of spice was just right for me – enough to feel a kick but not enough to leave me tearing up.
— Chinese Broccoli: Eh. This was probably the worst dish that we ordered. It was just so PLAIN. Not enough salt/​seasoning. It was literally just steamed Chinese broccoli. Maybe we didn’t read the menu carefully enough? But this was definitely not worth it. There are better vegetable options on the menu…
— Fried Banana with Ice Cream: Another interesting dish. I found it to be just okay… it’s REALLY heavy as the name indicates, and I felt like I was about to get a heart attack after a few bites. The bananas were good (fried texture was really interesting). I just find it weird how they paired it with orange flavor ice cream… like why… I wasn’t a fan. But maybe that’s just me. I wish it could have been vanilla or chocolate…
SO. Overall, like my friend says, I would only recommend coming here for the small dishes (appetizers). The other dishes were okay but nothing spectacular. And if you come here as a party of 2, DON’T order as much as we did.

Omgosh ! We were so pleasantly surprised with every dish we ordered! Every plate was on point! The lamb curry was fall-​off the bone tender and the sauces were savory and delicious! The the Sandan seabass was out of this world! The mild coconut sauce gravy was an excellent complement to a mild and subtle buttery fish!!! A must order again and again. The seafood claypot also was spot on! The servers were friendly and easy to talk to! We definitely will be back!

Came to this plaza late and found out that this was the only restaurant opened late. Got a few dishes and they came really fast. The owner was nice but the food was okay. Too much MSG in everything. Everything was flavorful but too flavorful in my taste. Perks for this restaurant for opening late! If you are ever feeling hungry at night time, come here!

New Penang Garden sits inside the Milpitas Square with the 99 Ranch Market and plenty of other restaurants and businesses.
The food here to be honest, is just mediocre. There is nothing that makes this place special, and I can see why many people just rate this place as a 3.
First off, they cannot make a simple Thai Tea right. The Thai Tea here is tasteless. It is really lacking in taste and just not made right. A place that serves Thai, Singaporean and Malaysian cuisine cannot perfect a simple Thai Tea?!
We ordered the Chicken Curry Laska Noodle, and while the portion size was ample, it was just okay. They gave a lot of Chicken in the dish, more than what most restaurants would give. A few pieces of tofy, some veggies and of course some noodles.
Then the Beef Randang, is different than other places. Here, it seems as if they cook the beef, which is in strips and then once the beef is cooked, they just pour the sauce on top. The beef was also in slices, not the same as all otherp laces that make this. Other places don’t make it in slices.
The customer service was alright. They speak Cantonese and English of course. So you can whip out your Cantonese if you need to! Overall, this place was a meh for me.

The place must be under new management since we last came in 2010: updated review:
This place is just funky with one of the worse customer service we have had at any restaurants. First off, we went on a very busy Friday evening. They were crazy busy and you can tell they were severely short staffed. One loud woman who was running back and forth as hostess was very very rude. She told us it would be a 30min wait and then changed her mind since we were about to leave, giving us a huge table. We looked at the menus for around 20min with no one to give us water or take our order. We just said, wow they are short staffed and that woman (the hostess probably owner) seems very stressed. Some tables had to go get their own menus as well.
After they gave us some water and took our order, we were then informed that there was a larger party than ours and to please move ourselves to another table. We have never been asked this in past restaurants! So we had to take our plates/​napkins/​utensils and water and shuffle ourselves to a smaller table.
The food we ordered: Salty fish with veggies: good veggies but mostly all veggies with like 3 pieces of any fish. Lamb curry: pretty good with okra and potatoes. Beef with brocolli: typical dish of most places and done pretty well. Chicken penang: potatoes and chicken/​nicely done. Sizzling bean curd with shrimp and eggs: it was good/​no complaints.
So all in all, the food was decent the service not so much. We’ll probably try other options in the future and find a place with good food and service. That is why we docked the 2 stars otherwise it would had been a solid 4 star place had the service been decent.

This wasn’t our first or second choice. It was Friday Funday, and we knew Milpitas Square would be a madhouse, and so was pick number 1: Pepper Lunch. Darda wasn’t much better, so we decided to walk to the first place without a line. Glad we came across New Penang Garden.
With 6 of us, we had no issue getting a table, and the place had a number of other patrons. So not dead, but also not line around the door. So, you know, accessible.
I fear the big thing going against this place is the menu is huge. Ludicrously huge, 300 items huge. As it is Malaysia and Singapore in nature, that means it also has a lot of cross over with India and China. So pretty much anything you can think, they may have, including the tanks for fresh seafood, and a plethora of vegetarian options too.
Fortunately for lunch, they have a solid 28 item menu with everything less than $ 9. Score! Curry dishes, rice dishes, noodle dishes and more.
I went with the Indian Mee Goreng. I wasn’t familiar with it, but my coworker made fun of me for choosing the «White Person» option of picking the item with a picture. He didn’t make this joke towards my Indian coworker, mind you. But I have no complaints, it was delicious. Noodles, shrimp, chicken, tofu and veggies in a spicy sauce. Had never had Mee Goreng before but I am a fan.
We also got a few roti for the table, which went quickly.
I would gladly return, but with 300 items on that menu, I sadly will not be able to try it all.

So, we ordered Hainanese chicken, pineapple fried rice and green curry chicken for take out. I explicitly told the staff that I wanted extra ginger and sauce that comes with the Hainanese chicken and he assured it will be there. Mixing the ginger and soya sauce with the rice would make the whole dish yummy! However when we got back home we noticed that we didn’t get the extra and that takes away one star for the service.
Now for the tasting. its very authentic. Reminds you a bit of when you had the same dish in Singapore and Thailand. The green curry sauce is rich with flavors and so does the taste of Hainan chicken. However the Hainan chicken meat itself was a bit dry and firm to chew. Its the taste like when you reheat the same dish on the next day… also, we ordered a half size chicken and it wasn’t a lot meat but bones. It must been a small size chicken.
In overall, its not perfect and just OK.

I’m not the malaysian/​singaporean food expert so I’m going to keep my review short. The beef in the beef rendang was very tender and the sauce was very curry based. Other veggie/​noodle dishes were decent. Nothing that stood out.
Service was above average for an asian restaurant.

I grew up going to the SF Chinatown location a lot and when I stumbled across this location, I was prompted to come back and try their foods. Keep in mind, this place is more of a Chinese styled Malaysian/​Indonesian/​Indian restaurant, so the food may not be 100% authentic.
+ THE FOOD
My family and I ordered the set meal consisting of the Roti Canai, Tom Yum soup, pineapple fried rice, Hainan chicken, Belacan string beans and eggplant, Satay chicken skewers, and Rendang beef. I loved the Roti Canai because it was so crispy and the sauce that came with it was very tasty. The Tom Yum soup was very nice because it had a rich tomato taste and the spiciness level was perfect. The pineapple fried rice was pretty good but I wish there was more pineapple flavor to it. The Hainan chicken tasted authentic but lacked a bit of flavor as well. The string beans and eggplant dish seemed to be stir fried in shrimp paste and was decent. I looked forward to the Satay skewers a lot and the sauce did not disappoint. However, I wish the skewers were grilled more. The Rendang beef reminded me of the Satay sauce and was alright.
+ THE PRICES
The set meal was $ 68 before tax and tip. 7 dishes for $ 68 is pretty good, having each dish around $ 10! The portion sizes of the meats are huge so you get your money’s worth.

This was the lunch to end my little San Jose trip to visit my good friend, and this plaza seriously had so many good options! But despite that, I chose wrong.
I love Malaysian curry! It was a recent new found love, but I was horribly betrayed. We got the lamb in rendang (?) curry as well as the house special friend rice. Immediately the waitress came off a bit overbearing with advice to order appetizers. However, my friend and I has been binge eating the day before, so I declined her to her grave disappointment.
The curry had so much meat, but was strangely chewy. After some minutes, the sauce sort of coagulated and became grainy… like if they did not cook the paste evenly with water, but just diluted it. We could barely eat half of this dish before feeling disgusted. The rice, despite the excessive amount of basil used in it was not too overwhelming in flavor. However, each bite was a gamble because some of the red onions they used tasted like they had gone bad. Not all of the onions, just like ¹⁄₆ bites would result in a mini hurl in my mouth. The other ⁵⁄₆ was bland.
So if you are reading this, I hope it is not too late to choose something else that is probably just a short walk away.

After visiting Singapore, I have constantly looked for a comparable Malaysian cuisine spot. My mom and I decided to give this place a try after perusing through their menu. We ordered the Malaysian iced tea, roti telur, chicken skewer, Hainanese chicken rice and seafood laksa noodle soup.
I would recommend ordering the Malaysian iced tea and the chicken skewers.