Sage Restaurant & Wine Bar www.gardenshtlres.com

When Cilantro — Kuala Lumpur’s much revered fine dining restaurant — closed last year, chef Takashi Kimura and his team migrated en masse to helm Sage’s kitchen where they’ve created a marriage of Japanese and French nouvelle cuisines. This is evident in dishes like vichyssoise of artichokes and the aged Angus beef a la plancha. The sleek restaurant also boasts a cigar room for diners to unwind in, perhaps with a bottle of wine chosen from its well-stocked cellar.