When our friend Lindsey was visiting we took her to one of our favorite types of restaurants, a Tamil (southern Indian) restaurant that serves food known here as “banana leaf rice”.  What it is, you see, is a big banana leaf covered with rice and other foods.  The restaurant that we took Lindsey to, in a part of town known as Bangsar, was good, but we are sad that we didn’t take her to another one that we found yesterday.  This one is in Petaling Jaya, a neighboring city outside of KL proper but well with the metro area.  It’s a place called Raju’s, and it has a loyal following.  We think that it easily beats the place in Bangsar, the trendy area where we took Lindsey (sorry, Lindsey!).

We have heard that sometimes you can see VIPs there, and that the current PM Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi used to go there a lot when he was still only Foreign Minister.  No VIPs there this time though.  But we shouldn’t talk the place up too much because Malaysians have very strong opinions about what the best banana leaf rice places are.  Some people love Raju’s, some people think it’s good but too expensive, and some dismiss it as not spicy enough.

We got some pictures and have posted them in our Culinary Delights folder, along with some others.  These others include pictures of our attempts of popiah and cap cai, two dishes whose recipes we posted last week, and a bunch of others whose recipes we have not yet posted.  Our pictures from Raju’s start here, and you can scroll forward to see what banana leaf rice looks like and to watch me (TP) give a demonstration of how to eat curry with your hands.  Please excuse the hair style: we decided to take showers after we went out into the heat of the day for lunch and errands.