So a new Malaysian restaurant opens on West 8th Street in New York a few weeks ago, and my friend suggests we try it out. Four of us went tonight, and I got this odd feeling as I entered the restaurant that I had been here before, but when it was a different restaurant/cuisine type. As we sat there, I realized it had previously been a so-so sushi place I visited once. Apparently, the people who took over this spot and made it Malaysian kept the decor and layout exactly the same and just redid the menu and staff.

This tends to be what happens when you live in New York for a while. You go to restaurants that are just so-so or sub-par (or horrendous), forget you ever really went there because there was nothing worth remembering, and then go back to the same location and get that deja vu feeling you’d been there before but can’t pinpoint when. Turnover here is really high, even when restaurants are tasty or innovative. This replacement was passable, but not worth eating again (the laksa was nothing like the laksa I know, and the Hainanese chicken was completely flavorless, even for a relatively blander dish). These are the places that need to be eliminated to give other places a shot.