Thank goodness the sore throat has disappeared for now I can eat once again. Not that I mind soup, but a steady diet of it gets very tiring. Since we moved into the house, which is out in the 'burbs and thus not within walking distance of all those fabulous KL restaurants, we've also had to start cooking once again, and it has been nice and comforting to eat pasta or baked potatoes. But you didn't tune in here to hear about domestic tranquility--you want to know more about the restaurants we've been to. My goal is not to disappoint you.....

On Sunday we found the closest restaurant to us that had a high rating on some internet web site (there are many competing ones that attempt to rank restaurants by city; I simply use them for suggestions), Cavallini's at The Palace of the Golden Horses near the Mines Resort. There's actually three restaurants in the the Palace (which is a fancy hotel): a Japanese one that looked promising, a Chinese one that didn't look quite as interesting, and Cavallini's, which focuses on Italian food. Walking into the restaurant, I was surprised at how few tables there were. Mainly the place is a long, thin room next to the hallway that is more of a bar and cigar lounge, with lots of big leather chairs and a big-screen TV. The few tables are next to the windows, and had to be less than 10 of them. We took the one furthest from the TV, having shown up fairly early. The complimentary bruschetta topping was quite tasty, even if the bread was slices of toast rather than an actual fresh-made pane. Both of us had the mozerella caprese salad, which was very good (they peeled the tomatoes for some reason, but that didn't affect the taste). J had the pasta with forest mushrooms and I had the spinach and ricotta rigatoni in a tomato cream sauce. The rigatoni had much more spinach than cheese, which actually improved it over what you receive elsewhere, although I felt the portion was a little small. For wine, J had a glass of Valpolicella while I had the Orvieto. The total was fairly expensive by Malaysian standards, but at least the food lived up to its recommendation.

On Tuesday we had to run into town and pick up some medical records from the hospital, so we elected to stick around and have dinner. Even after hitting the hardware and grocery store for some needed house items, we were too early to the restaurant, A Passage Thru India, as it hadn't opened yet. We walked around the block to waste time and see what else was around and were reminded once again how ill-suited Kuala Lumpur is for walking around. We did discover a Japanese restaurant that looked promising as well as the Malaysian office of Blizzard Games (the makers of World of Warcraft). I mistook the latter for a game store, and had to be informed by the smokers outside that it was instead an office. If this renewable energy business doesn't work out, though, I know where to take my resume now. When we got back to the restaurant the gate was open, although we were definitely the first customers of the evening (it had half-filled by the time we left). Compared to The Bombay Palace, just down Jalan Tun Razak, we didn't think Passage quite lived up to its top spot on Yahoo's restaurant picks, although everything we had was quite edible. I thought the vegetable samosas a bit greasy, although the filling was nice and spicy. We ordered the fish tikka based on the waiter saying it was spicier than the mahi kebab, but spicier and spicy are two different terms. J's paneer in tomato sauce was the best dish, while the garlic naan and mixed vegetable raita were adequate. I'd return, but not for awhile.

Finally, a note about one of those web sites that provide restaurant rankings: TripAdvisor. During our drive from DC to Texas, TripAdvisor had proven very useful in pointing out hotels and restaurants. And, as far as hotels go, it has our favorite, the Traders Hotel, as the number one hotel in KL (the rankings take into account value as well as services). Unfortunately, the restaurant reviews for KL are not only lacking (most of them tend to be one-liners of little value), but the rankings put Chili's (yes, the U.S. chain restaurant) as the number one restaurant in KL. Okay, it's true that we haven't been there, but I find it very hard to believe that Chili's is the best restaurant--or even best value for dining out--in KL. To help TripAdvisor out, I thought I would add some of these comments that I've been writing here and copied in my Ozeki review from a couple of weeks ago into their form and submitted it. I received a rejection for that review today because their policy is "No quoted material from other sources, no material published elsewhere, including other travel review sites." Pfui! The only way TripAdvisor gets exclusive rights to my writing is if they pay for it. So much for their version of Web 2.0.