Istio Ingress Gateway not working in Anthos - kubernetes

Question

I created a cluster in GKE - (Google Kubernetes Engine)
Folowed the instructions here https://cloud.google.com/service-mesh/docs/quickstart-asm
but used my own deployment files.
I deployed these service and gateway file.
Partial Service
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: node-microservice-service
spec:
selector:
app: node-microservice
# type: LoadBalancer
ports:
- name: tcp-node
protocol: TCP
port: 8080
targetPort: 8080
# nodePort: 30000
---
Gateway
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: Gateway
metadata:
name: backend-gateway
spec:
selector:
istio: ingressgateway # use Istio default gateway implementation
servers:
- port:
number: 80
name: http
protocol: HTTP
hosts:
- "backend.com"
---
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: VirtualService
metadata:
name: backend-ingress
spec:
hosts:
- "backend.com"
gateways:
- backend-gateway
http:
- match:
- uri:
prefix: "/node"
route:
- destination:
port:
number: 8080
host: node-microservice-service
- match:
- uri:
prefix: "/java"
route:
- destination:
port:
number: 8080
host: java-microservice-service
- match:
- uri:
prefix: "/golang"
route:
- destination:
port:
number: 8080
host: golang-microservice-service
- match:
- uri:
prefix: "/python"
route:
- destination:
port:
number: 8080
host: python-microservice-service
- route:
- destination:
port:
number: 8080
host: python-microservice-service
I am using the proper IP address and host together still unable to reach the microservices through the istio ingress gateway service.