Rasa

Rasa is a 52-seat Malaysian restaurant on West 8th Street in Greenwich Village, run by siblings Tommy and Camie Lai, who grew up in a small village called Rasa about an hour north of Kuala Lumpur. In Malay, rasa means taste, and also feeling, and the restaurant aims for both. The Lais learned to cook alongside their mother, absorbing her recipes for Malaysian street food and the homestyle cooking known as choo char. Tommy moved to New York in the 1990s and trained in local kitchens, including Penang, one of the city's early Malaysian restaurants, before opening Rasa. The dining room is warm and unfussy, with a halal menu that also touches on Thai and Indonesian dishes.

Diners point to the classics: nasi lemak, the coconut rice plate with sambal; prawn noodles; and Hainanese-style chicken rice. The kitchen also highlights assam curry fish, a tangy, tamarind-sour curry that shows off the brighter side of Malaysian cooking. Rasa was featured by the YouTuber New York Turk in 2025, in a short about trying Malaysian food for the first time. On weekdays the restaurant serves lunch, and on Sundays it has offered a prix fixe with a drink, appetizer and entree, a good way for first-timers to explore. Reservations are available online, and it is an easy dinner before a show at one of the Village's jazz clubs.