We were looking for a place to eat on the way out of Auckland. It's been awhile since I've had Malaysian and I'm always a sucker for a good laksa. A quick search brought up Gu Xiang Malaysian Restaurant. It's in a random small strip mall that also has a few restaurants and a Eastern Fresh grocery store.
We dropped in on a Wednesday (around noon) for lunch. The place has plenty of tables and it was about half full. Completely full of Asian clientele. The servers speak Cantonese and English. Service is good here; just catch the waitress attention and you can get refills on your tea and water.
The menu is massive; appetizers, noodles, noodle soup, fried rice, nasi lemak, dishes on rice, pork/beef, chicken, tofu, fish (market price), prawns, squid, vegetables (seasonal price) and others. All the meat and vegetable dishes are very pricey.
- 2x Roti canai (#116) ($3.00 NZD each) - thought these come with a curry sauce dip but nope. You just get the roti canai. These were greasy but had some sweet tones to it that I wasn't expecting. Order this with the chicken curry ($12.90 NZD) instead.
- Loo mai gai (#9) ($5.00 NZD) - this was pretty glutinous and had a thick, sweet oyster like sauce. We were intrigued by the photo of it on the wall. Just average.
- Curry laksa with chicken curry (#21A) ($13.90 NZD) - the broth was creamy but not very spicy. I'm pretty picky with my laksa; this was better than I expected it to be. They throw in two types of noodles (thin vermicelli and yellow lo mein), tofu puffs and bean sprouts. Get it!
- Seafood noodle (#20C) ($11.80 NZD) - the broth is sweet and tasted like wonton soup broth. You get yellow noodles, mix of seafood, bok choy and bean sprouts. Definitely a Chinese influenced dish. Pretty mediocre, nothing special in my books.
- Hainese chicken on rice (#31) ($11.80 NZD) - the chicken was hot and tender. Came with delicious side of rice, a vegetable soup and chili garlic sauce. Simple but satisfying.
Stick with the Malaysian dishes. Good portion sizes. 3.5 stars. read more