Frangipani in KL

On our last full day in Kuala Lumpur, we decided to splurge on a nice restaurant. We chose Frangipani, recommended by both our tour book and the almighty TripAdvisor.

We arrived a little bit early and apparently there was a private event going on, so we sat at the bar for awhile. I ordered a "Frangipanties" and D had a Ginger Cosmopolitan. My drink was delicious; it had grapefruit and lime and rum in it. D's was too ginger-y for my taste, but he liked it.

After a few minutes, someone came to let us know our table was ready, and led us downstairs to the dining room. There was a large sunken area in the middle of the room, which I thought was just shiny black marble but D realized it was a very shallow lake. It's not very clear in this picture, but there's definitely water in there:

Later on while we were eating, a large party came in, and one of the guests accidentally fell into the lake. Everyone in the restaurant had a good laugh, and he was pretty cool about it. Afterwards it appeared that he (and most of his table) got good and drunk, which is an awesome way to get over being cold and wet, in my mind.

There was a tasting menu available, but it involved a lot of fish, so we chose the three-course menu instead. Each of us selected a "small" appetizer, a "large" appetizer, and a main.

First, we were served a selection of breads. There was a focaccia, a sesame bread, and some kind of darker bread that I couldn't quite identify. They were all quite good; D's favorite was the focaccia, mine was the dark one:

There were two amuses before the first course; an asparagus and tomato soup, and a semolina and mushroom cake with salad. The soup was so-so (then again I dislike asparagus), but the semolina cake was pretty good:


For his first course, D had Hokkaido scallop with mushroom and potato. He says it was his favorite dish all night (it was really too small to share, so I didn't make him):

I chose the prawn carpaccio with cucumber and tomato soup. I'm a big fan of tomato soup and all but I think I would have chosen otherwise had I known the amuse would also be chilled tomato soup. In any case I thought this particular dish was a little weak; not that flavorful, and the different ingredients didn't mesh that well:

However, my next course was excellent; the soft shell crab was delicately crispy and juicy. The sauces were not all that interesting, but it didn't really need sauce:

D had smoked salmon, which he thought was only average in taste. I stole a lot of his salmon roe:

Before the mains came, we were served a palate cleanser of starfruit sorbet with couscous, tomato, and basil underneath. D thought the mix of sweet and salty was strange, but I rather liked it:

My main course was duck breast with bits of crispy duck skin and a cone of mixed grains. The duck was above average but not amazing. The cone was quite interesting and I liked eating it with the sauce:

D had the duck confit, which we both preferred to my duck breast. It came with mashed potato, fried potato chips, and bits of Dijon mustard. In my opinion, it was the mustard that made the dish; too often duck is served with icky sweet sauces. I don't think I've ever had mustard with duck before, but it's very good that way:


We were unfortunately too full to eat dessert, so nothing to report on that front. I'd say the service was excellent, although the waiter's English accent was not as good as I would have hoped (he described the dark bread to me three times and I still couldn't figure out what he was saying). The food was quite good, although nothing like Tetsuya's, of course. The restaurant prices were almost US-level, and the drinks were definitely priced at US-level.

Overall, we enjoyed our dinner experience very much, except when we tried to catch a taxi home, the asshole driver tried to rip us off, but that's not the restaurant's responsibility, and they were quite sympathetic and helpful about it, anyway.