The West Village is filled with trendy, destination restaurants, and that sometimes means overlooking the more local, neighborhood spots. Rasa, a restaurant that opened in 2013, offers a tasty menu with less fuss, offering strong neighborhood vibes and good food.

New York’s dining Malaysian scene was “sparsely populated” when Rasa opened, but that was before Dimes Square and Kopitam, and numerous other restaurants.

Rasa delivers where it counts though with a strong selection of reinvented and traditional dishes, combining Malay, Chinese, and Indian influences. There are Thai and Japanese dishes too.

For anyone worried about authenticity, Rasa is the product of a brother and sister team, Chef Tommy Lai and Camie Lai, who moved to New York in the 1990s. According to the New York Post, they named the restaurant after the small town they grew up in, located about an hour north of Kuala Lumpur.

We showed up on a rainy Saturday afternoon after an extended stop at the Jefferson Market library. Too many books had put our four-year-old to sleep, allowing us an uninterrupted late lunch.

I kicked things off with a Mai Tai, but my wife didn’t need much convincing and ordered one too. It was a fun cocktail to roll with on a dreary day.

My wife had been here before, having arranged a dinner party at the spot. It’s a good choice for that type of thing, and the restaurant was quite accommodating. The menu looked spectacular, and we decided to split a few things

We started off with a little sample platter with chicken satay, curry puffs and chunks of fried tofu. Bonus for me–my wife hates tofu so I got an extra one. I enjoyed it with a good crispiness to the exterior.

We often order curry puffs, so we’re well familiar with a variety of styles. These had a unique spiciness to them that made them stand out, plus the pastry was flaky and golden.

The satay sauce was sweet with a hint of spice on the backend. Overall, an above average chicken satay.

The roti canai, a fluffy bread and curry sauce on the side, is another favorite of mine. The curry sauce was thickened with potatoes and onions, and not just a few for show.

We also ordered the murtabak pancake, a flaky pastry stuffed with ground beef, potatoes and curry spice. This also came with a side of curry.

Typical of Malaysian cuisine is beef Rendang, a spicy, lemongrassy flavor dish served over rice. Rendang is both the dish, and the cooking method. The Rendang method is way of cooking meat in spiced coconut milk until the oil separates and then fries the meat.

I think I liked Rasa’s presentation and overall flavor better than Fish Market, my usual go to. The beef flaked apart, and was full of flavor.

Finally we topped everything off with a noodle dish, char keuh teow. This stir-fry dish has Chinese origins, originally created to serve Chinese laborers working in southeast Asian island region.

We skipped a protein in this dish, though I would have been happy to balance it off with a bit of tofu. The flavors were good, but overall without the protein–and again, this was our fault–a little bit too much like wet vegetables over noodles.

This was a spectacular meal for something planned on a whim. Our four-year-old woke up just as we were leaving, which was good timing on his part since his usual diet of french fries and pasta was not something we could accommodate here. I started out by saying this was a neighborhood spot, and it is, but it probably deserves to be a destination itself. The food was better than might be expected on West 8th Street, and a place I’d recommend and return to.

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