Serving nyonya cuisine (otherwise known as Peranakan cuisine, a fusion of Chinese, Malay, Indonesian and Thai influences), The Malaya restaurant was founded by Wong Tai See at the southern end of Sydney’s George Street in 1963. On the edge of the city’s Chinatown, the restaurant introduced dishes that were unfamiliar to local diners and a far cry from the conventional Asian choices of the time. Among these was laksa, the spicy noodle soup now familiar throughout Australia.
The Peranakan Chinese were descendants of Chinese sailors who, from the 15th century, settled along the trade channels of South East Asia and married the local women. Laksa is a dish merging the Chinese taste for noodles with the coconut milk and curry pastes of Malacca, Penang, Singapore and other ports along these trade routes.
Mr Wong’s laksa was different, however. It was made with dairy milk, not coconut milk. In the 1960s, many ingredients were difficult to obtain on the local market and Wong, a former merchant seaman, would sail every year to bring back spices for the restaurant. Perhaps importing coconut milk in the quantities he required was too difficult or expensive. Ever since, The Malaya’s laksa has been made with milk.
The Malaya attracted students from nearby Sydney University as well as journalists, police and professionals in the area. This success led to the opening of a North Sydney offshoot in 1975. In 1982, The Sydney Morning Herald wrote:
A favourite stand-by of many Chinese food lovers are the two Malaya restaurants – one at the Railway Square end of George Street and the other in Mount Street, North Sydney. Their prawn lasa (sic), consisting of prawns and rice noodles in a red-hot chilli soup, is superb – the best of its kind in Sydney.
The Malaya became a Sydney institution. Tai See’s son, Lance, joined him in the business and took over when his father died in 1994. The restaurant’s city address changed several times, moving to different premises in George Street and then to King’s Wharf at Darling Harbour. In 2025, it was on the move again, this time to Grosvenor Place back in George Street. Just as peripatetic was the North Sydney restaurant. Initially in Mount Street, it relocated to the old fire station in Walker Street in 1987 then crossed the road to a new Walker Street address in 2001. A favourite with North Sydney advertising folk (I remember a number of meals there in the 1990s), the North Sydney restaurant closed in 2002.
The restaurant offers more than laksa, of course. Other perennial favourites are the Beef Rendang, Otak Otak (fish wrapped in banana leaves) and a range of curries. Reviews were mixed in 2024, with some suggesting the prices were on the high side – a prawn laksa for $34 for example. And the latest incarnation of The Malaya lacks the spectacular harbour views of the King Street Wharf location. Chances are, though, that the faithful will keep coming.
It’s hard to trace laksa’s journey from specialty dish to food court staple. In Melbourne, one of the early purveyors was the first Chinta Ria, opened by Simon Goh in 1988 opposite the Prahran Market. It’s where I first tried laksa – a delicious version with clams – consumed to the sound of Goh’s beloved jazz. He subsequently opened two more Melbourne restaurants, Chinta Ria Soul and Chinta Blues, before moving to Sydney where Chinta Ria Temple of Love opened at Cockle Bay in 1998. Darwin, considered by locals to be the Australian home of laksa, has its own Laksa Festival every October.