Trattoria Il Porcellino

Trattoria Il Porcellino: Round Two. Earlier entry: August 23.

Cheese buffs, head here to sample fun varieties that other restaurants rarely serve. This "burrata" is a mild-tasting mix of mozzarella & fresh cream, boasting a buttery lusciousness to pamper the palate. Ask for it to be dished out at room temperature.

Four types of semi-hard Pecorino ewe's milk cheese, produced in Tuscany. Their delicately savory flavor, bonded with a nutty edge, would bring a nice boost to salads.

Trattoria Il Porcellino's porcine offerings are also noteworthy. Share this cold cut platter of wild boar salami, Parma ham, cured coppa, spicy salami, mortadella & salami felino for terrific tasting portions of pork from wide-ranging Italian regions.

Pork-stuffed tortellini with ham & cream. Rustic comfort food, like something that one might find in a mountain village of Emilia-Romagna.

Strozzapreti with wild boar ragout. The al dente doughiness of the hand-rolled, fat-tubed pasta was well complemented by its tangy, coarsely meaty coating.

Risotto with speck bacon & porcini mushrooms. Enjoyable for its warm earthiness.

Save space for dessert, particularly this tasty troika of mascarpone, nutella & strawberries. Smooth & sensuously sweet.

Yogurt ice cream with more strawberries.

Even the prosecco comes bearing strawberries. Yum!

Wine or beer ... pick your poison.

Trattoria Il Porcellino,

Menara Hap Seng, Jalan P. Ramlee, Kuala Lumpur.

Impromptu

It's all in the planning at Impromptu: burgers, pasta & pizzas _ familiar-sounding fare infused with thoughtful twists that make a delicious difference.

Lamb burger, featuring a meaty, sink-your-teeth-into-it patty, perfectly partnered with a pleasurably sweet mango chutney sauce. Beware: the potato crisps on the side are addictive.

Hand-made fettuccine with soft-shell crab. OK, this photo proves that even after 30 months of food blogging, we still tend to take terrible pictures. But what looks unappealing above is pretty tasty in reality, thanks to plenty of silky pasta with curry-laced cream & crunchy crab.

Beef yakiniku "pizza," served on a teriyaki-base tortilla. Close your eyes, bite into this, and it could be mistaken for a well-marinated beef sandwich, not pizza. Would be a brilliant bar snack _ if only Impromptu had a liquor license.

So where did this sake come from? Fortunately, Impromptu is the sister outlet of Nagomi Shabu-Shabu, which is able to offer booze next door.

Nagomi's wine selection is sorely limited, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Impromptu,

Menara Hap Seng, Jalan P. Ramlee, Kuala Lumpur.

Trattoria Il Porcellino

Now that Il Lido has gone pork-free & Chiaroscuro is plain gone, here's where can we go hog-wild with Italian cuisine in the city center.

Not the typical bruschetta: one topped with pork lard & walnuts, the other with minced pork & emmental cheese. A fabulously flavorful introduction to Trattoria Il Porcellino, a pork-filled, vastly superior offshoot of Jalan P. Ramlee's pork-free Trattoria Cucina Italia.

Tomino cheese wrapped in speck bacon. Soft, oven-baked cheese with smoky, salt-cured bacon: a hookup that's sinful but sensational.

Porchetta ham, described as "the product of a pig that's gutted, deboned, arranged in layers of meat, fat & skin, then rolled, spitted & roasted over wood." Sounds tediously elaborate, but the result tastes more satisfying than supermarket ham.

Crisp-skin suckling pig ribs stuffed with cheese & ham. A bane for girth control; too fatty & greasy for our liking, but still a rather unique recipe.

Atomica Pizza, topped with spreadable pork sausage, tomato & mozzarella. A fine change from other pizzas topped with ordinary sausage slices. This has mushy, spicy sausage meat spread across its surface, providing a pleasurable pungency to every bite.

Ruffino, Aziano Chianti Classico DOCG (Toscana). All in all, there's much to recommend about Trattoria Il Porcellino, a rare Italian outlet that has a predominantly female staff, including the heads of both its kitchen & service team.

Trattoria Il Porcellino,

Menara Hap Seng, Jalan P. Ramlee, Kuala Lumpur.