Midtown Lunch

Most people looking for Malaysian food in Chinatown head to Nyonya on Grand St. which is slightly classier than other places in the neighborhood. If you’re looking for a more bare-bones experience that requires walking down a steep flight of stairs, you may want to consider Sanur which serves some Americanized Chinese food, but specializes in Indonesian and Malaysian food. At first it was unclear if I was walking into a travel agency or restaurant due to the number of travel posters in the stairway. I can confirm that cheap Indonesian food can be found at the bottom of those steep stairs leading to Sanur, and it’s a nice change of pace from all of the Chinese options in the surrounding area.

Above is my order of mee rebus ($5.95) which is a pile of thin egg noodles topped with a sweet and spicy sauce, jalapeno, bean sprouts, pieces of hard boiled egg and some fried tofu, capped off with a couple of pieces of fried tofu skin. They were out of my first choice which was the Indonesian standby rice dish nasi goreng, so I guess the key is to go earlier than 1 p.m. if you’re particular about what you want.

This was a great change of pace from Chinese lo mein or hand-cut noodles, or Vietnamese bun dishes. I liked the sauce over it which was bright tasting and not at all heavy or greasy. Dare I say this was a healthy lunch?

Sanur’s probably not going to offer you the cheapest lunch experience in Chinatown, but if you work near the courthouse or other government buildings it’s a short walk and the Indonesian and Malaysian options are a nice change of pace if you’re not for walking up to Nyonya.

Sanur, 18 Doyers St. (btw. Bowery & Pell St.), (212) 267-0088