Over the past cou­ple of months I have been review­ing Malaysian restau­rants all around Welling­ton for Malaysia Kitchen (full dis­clo­sure – I got refund­ed some of the costs). It’s time to share the reviews!

With so many Malaysian restau­rants to choose from in the cap­i­tal, some­times the deci­sion sim­ply comes down to where­abouts you are at any giv­en time. Satay Vil­lage on Ghuznee Street is fre­quent­ly a win­ner when it comes to loca­tion, being just off Cuba Street (and hand­i­ly close to a num­ber of dairies that sell wine).

When we rocked up in a group of six at 7pm on a Wednes­day, we knew we were push­ing our luck not hav­ing a reser­va­tion, but luck­i­ly it was a nice enough night that we didn’t mind wait­ing on the street for 10 min­utes before we could get a table.

Hav­ing a large group meant we got to try lots of things on the menu. We felt the spring rolls at $10 for six weren’t par­tic­u­lar­ly good val­ue, espe­cial­ly since, as one of my com­pan­ions put it, on the night we went there appeared to be a lot more roll than spring — they could have used more fill­ing. Beef satay with peanut sauce was charred nice­ly, but cry­ing out for more salt — which luck­i­ly was pro­vid­ed.

Much bet­ter were the chick­en wings — I’d nev­er ordered them before but they were deli­cious­ly crunchy, and light­ly spiced with turmer­ic.

Turmer­ic was a reoc­cur­ring spice through­out our meals. Two of our par­ty ordered mee goreng, which was avail­able with one, two or three addi­tions (chick­en, seafood or veg­eta­bles), and their plates were a huge pile of yel­low noo­dles.

I decid­ed to try anoth­er dish I’ve nev­er had before, and so I ordered the most expen­sive thing on the menu at $18; a crumbed pork chop with creamy lemon­grass sauce. It arrived as pieces of schnitzel instead of chops, but this was fine since at least I didn’t have to deal with any bones. The sauce is thick and deli­cious, made with coconut cream, but it was an incred­i­bly rich com­bi­na­tion with the deep-fried pork. Beef ren­dang is served with lots of sauce, rather than the more tra­di­tion­al dry ver­sion, and although I didn’t sam­ple it, the red chick­en cur­ry looks tasty.

For quick food at fair­ly cheap prices, Satay Vil­lage deliv­ers. I like that it’s got a BYO license, unlike its near­by com­peti­tors, but if you’re look­ing for a place with an elab­o­rate fit-out and high­ly atten­tive ser­vice, you might want to look else­where.