Bunga Raya

Family businesses are amazing — our host Rita was fantastic, enthusiastic and took time to explain the composition of dishes on the menu. I’ve rated them 4 stars due to my personal preferences — but would rank 5 starts on the authentic taste chart.
We ordered XO (Extra Ordinary) Chicken and Prawns and Mi Goreng Noodles. Everything was hot and tasted freshly made.

Dined here last night with friends (best way to eat at a place like this as you can get a whole lot of varieties to try together). It just keep getting better each time I am here. The hosts are the BEST in Auckland, no joke. It is like stepping into a friends place hosting a party — vibrant, friendly, knowledgeable and just perfect at their job. The food is fantastic and all our friends agreed — including one that east out alot and turned to me and said — «this is the best food I have had out in a long time». Highly recommend XO eggplant and squid, crispy honey chicken, the famous «silky smooth» tofu in a peanut sauce (pehaps the most popular amongst everyone), the amazing green beans, actually everything! I don’t hink you will go wrong with whatever you order;)

Only eaten there twice and had takeaway once, all three times have been good. I’m not to familiar with Malay style of food, find it a bit sweet rather than savory or umami flavour but you can taste the flavours that are genuine Malay. What makes this place memorable are the owners. The husband and wife team are something different. The first time I went was with five others of which none had eaten Malay food, the owners (wife) were extremely helpfull in describing the different dishes and recommending an assortment of dishes even though it was a full house, they didn’t rush us and made us feel very welcome hence the fact that we’ve been back. The portions are huge, alright if your all big eaters but too much for me, doggie bag lunch the next day that’s fine. Definitely be back there with a few people in tow.

This place is great my brother is a volatile type 1 diabetec and when we go out for dinner wich is once every 2 months we always come here it is delicious. Great service great food and 3 to 4 things feed 5 people highly recommend

OH MY GOSH!!! Is all I can say! This is the first 5 star rating I have given!
I checked this place out because of all the great reviews that were given ‘best Malaysian restaurant in Akld’ ‘will travel from afar just to eat there’ etc
Boy do I now know why! So grateful I live in the West not to far to travel!
I am so big on flavoursome food. That is the way I like to cook & I don’t think I’ve gone to any other restaurant with great delicious flavoursome food — lot of grunt & it’s not the hot spicy flavour (though I love that) it is truly authentic cooking that I could imagine tasting in their home country or a home cooked meal by a Nana with all those recipes handed down.
Every dish we tasted was delicious like WOW! I’ve never heard my husband groan over how delicious food was. We ordered the chicken xo, eggplant in a flavoursome sauce, fish, fried rice. Can’t wait to try some other dishes! We went there to eat twice in a week.
The front house host was excellent at helping us out with dishes & recommending different sauces we could try as alternatives! She’s also great with kids.
Definitely a place to go with a big group to share generous servings.
Definitely is our top place to eat — They cook food with a lot of LOVE!

After hearing from several reliable sources that this is THE NO.1 Malaysian restaurant to go to in Auckland, we finally made it. Kind of funny that has taken us so long seeing as this part of the city has been our home for quite a few years now. Anyway to begin I can definitely now say it is worth travelling from any part of Auckland to sample it’s fare. It’s not on the main street in New Lynn so you may drive past if you don’t know where to look. We went on a Monday night, and were lucky to get a table as it does get busy for dinner and a sign at the door says so. Bookings recommended!!! Once inside it was a friendly welcome, service was good throughout and the food was delicious. They do have a good number of dishes on menu to choose from. We had the XO Chicken, Stir fry pork in satay sauce and Nyanya Sambai fried rice. As usual if you don’t finish everything you can takeaway, it’s BYO but you must pay an extra dollar for doing so and if you spend more than $ 100 you can pay using credit card. I reckon definitely worthy of the trip from anywhere in the city but make sure you book for dinner.

The food was so good here. So good. I am thinking about it now while I am writing this review. Sorry, I forgot all their names. I was too busy eating. I remembered we had fish with this beautiful dark sauce. Prawn with cornflakes. Hai nan chicken, and veggies. But the veggie was a little bit spicy for us.
Service was good, very friendly staff. The environment was ok, like most of the Asian places. Very relaxing. The location was good, a lot of car parks.
What should I order next time? Haha

Lunched here twice in the last three days, as we love Malaysian food. What we experienced here in the Bunga Raya Restaurant in New Lynn was authentic Malaysian cuisine. The food here is beautiful. Their signature dish seems to be the «Fish Head Noodle Soup» as one in every two tables had appeared to have ordered it. Our other meal was the «Curry Chicken Laksa» dish which was very «hot».
But what the Bunga Raya Restaurant really lacked was «service». The head-​waitress who also appeared to be the owner was extremely grumpy and completely smile-​less when taking our order. Its a real pity this happens as customers shouldn’t have to put up with this. You get the impression the owners here should have retired over 10 years ago instead of coming in 6 days a week to make money.
Customers shouldn’t have to put up with crappy service.
The only time we received a smile was when her cashier husband took our money!
We have never been back there again since. There are many other Malaysian restaurants in Auckland with equally good food and yet much better service!!!

I’m a huge fan of Malaysian and sort of thought I’d seen all there was to see in Auckland but it turns out I was wrong. Not quite sure how Bunga Raya slipped under my radar but it did. Until recently…
We made the mish out West a couple of weeks ago. There were 8 of us — all newbs. Somewhat bamboozled by the omission of laksa on the menu (they serve it at lunchtime only), our hostess with the mostess, Rita, took the reins and ordered for the table. I was skeptical but she absolutely nailed it — punchy xo chicken, butter prawns, a beautiful fish curry, silky smooth tofu (that’s made in house) and a generous side of green beans!
We got talking to Rita and it turns out her and her mother-​in-​law, who is in charge in the kitchen, run the place. The use tried and tested family recipes passed down through the generations. Her enthusiasm for Malaysia and the cuisine is evident and infectious — she’s tells us how the laksa from each state tastes slightly different and if given a bowl of each she could tell them apart. Rita also tells us that her cousin owns Mamak — clearly great cooking runs in the family!
If you’re a fan of Malaysian food and haven’t been to Bunga Raya yet, you are missing out! Make a booking and set a date…
Oh and it’s BYO.

Great place for the family to try some Malaysian style food. Must try is the curry chicken but the special dish of Hainan chicken you have to order the day before. Must get the rice that comes with Hainan chicken. Bit pricey though for asian food like this. Looking at $ 26+ for a dish to share.
Definitely not your everyday takeaway.

Clearly a popular place on a Friday night, but they were able to seat me since I was on my own. I give real props to this restaurant for the great service. They gave me some great guidance to find the kind if dish I was looking for. I ended up with a chicken curry that had great flavour, but as is often the style in Chinese and Malaysian restaurants the selection if meat includes a fair bit of skin and is a mixture of thigh meat. This might be authentic though and is not really my preference. Had it been leaner and better cuts I would go for 4-​stars

Great food and good service, love to go there at lunch time, price more reasonable than dinner.

This place is a hidden gem. It’s tucked away off the main street of new lynn, and worth venturing west for.
We first went with a group of about eight people from work, and I was really impressed with the attention the staff paid to particular dietary requirements in the group. They were able to advise which dishes were gluten free, and offered to make a popular dish slightly differently to make it vege.
I recommend asking the staff to suggest dishes for your order — not only are they the friendliest staff ever, they know their stuff!
Particular highlights are the XO squid, tamarin fish and the eggplant.
the portion sizes are large, to the point where you can get away with two dishes between three people. For that reason, I’d recommend going with a group so you can try a bunch of dishes — a couple would definitely only need two dishes between them. And that would make ordering decisions very difficult.
Also — byo!
What a dream.

What a great name for a Malaysian restaurant. It doesn’t so much roll off the tongue as bounce around your mouth full of happiness & flavour. Just like good Malaysian food should.
We’d heard good things about this place from locals, so decided to try it out on a wet Monday night. With visions of hot, spicy laksa and garlicky roti dancing in our heads, we navigated our way to this unassuming little spot. Be warned, although the address is on Great North Road, the restaurant is actually tucked around the corner on Memorial Drive. It’s another one of these averagely decorated places that almost signal the food is gonna be great these days. But thankfully the linoleum has been replaced with carpet in this joint, and the décor looks slightly more like someone has given it a passing thought.
And the rude waiters have been replaced with funny, informative, friendly staff who genuinely seem to a) know & b) care about what is happening in their kitchen. And they can even make wonderful suggestions! Our table of 4 loaded up with a chicken curry & satay chicken — since the locals had already come prepared to order their fave dishes — so us newbies went with the waitress’ suggestion of XO Squid and Coffee Pork Chops. Sadly the laksa is only on offer at lunchtime. But our disappointment didn’t last long.
Oh my yum! Satay Chicken; well, let’s just say there was a fight on our hands, as the visiting mini reviewer thought he had it all to himself. It was authentic, sweet but spicy, peanutty but not drenched in nuts. Possibly the best satay I’ve had.
The XO Squid was sweet, succulent squid legs stirfried with chili & basil & the delicious XO sauce — according to our lovely waitress the XO stands for extraordinary! I’d sign up for that recipe. I’m sorry for over-​using the word «sweet» throughout this review but it’s hard to describe these dishes any other way. The Coffee Pork Chops were also sweet, as the coffee sauce they were soaked in was like a honeyed coffeed gravy served on a bed of sliced onions and lettuce. An utterly delicious dish and apparently a signature dish of Bunga Raya.
While at dinner I commented on the blending beige tones of our chosen meals (with additional rice & a delicious, flaky roti). One the one hand I loved the fact that we weren’t burdened with cheap seasonal veges such as celery, capsicum & the ubiquitous carrot that comes with most Asian dishes; on the other I was sorely missing my greens. Due to the portion sizes at Bunga Raya, a table of 4 would be more than happy with 3 mains & a vege dish, even with 2 growing lads at the table (we had one aged 30+ and the other 11, very similar appetites!) we had enough leftovers for doggy bag takeaways.
The restaurant was packed with diners, and the sign at the door recommended booking for dinner. If it hadn’t been a Monday, I think we would have been out of luck finding a table, so make sure you’re pre-​warned before you try to join the lucky New Lynn locals in trying out this spot. And bring your favourite bottle of plonk with you; this place is BYO.

Bunga Raya is one of those «secret» places that people will sort of sidle up to you and say «Have you been there? Please let’s go together».
It’s pretty good here, but to be honest, I’m not sure if it’s a five star for me, purely because they kept putting milk into my vegan friend’s food, and she was a very regular customer before that. However, the food is very very good, and the service is totally individual and idiosyncratic, which is demonstrated by the fact that there are a number of dishes on the menu you have to order in advance (like two days before in advance) otherwise you’re shit out of luck! Obviously they’re all dishes that take a while to make, so I understand, but it’s quite a funny thing for a restaurant to do.
It’s set up for sharing, so it’s best to go in a big group so you don’t get meal envy of your fellow diner’s food.