French restaurant with wine wall, aperitif bar and ground-floor bistro in Bukit Damansara (Plaza Damansara), Kuala Lumpur

Chateau Dionne

A Wall of Wine in Damansara Heights

3.5 of 5

Château Dionne is a French restaurant that greets you with a wall of wine, and the wall is the reason it lands on this list. The two-storey shop lot sits in the Plaza Damansara strip of Bukit Damansara, and the first thing you meet is a floor-to-ceiling shelf of bottles next to an aperitif and digestif bar. The man behind it, David Lim, opened one of Malaysia's early dedicated wine shops in 1999, back when most people here drank wine at Chinese New Year and Christmas and not much in between. He took the Château Dionne name to Shanghai's Xuhui District first, then brought it home in 2020.

Five years in, the house has been rearranged. The ground floor was taken one notch down into a relaxed bistro where you can sit with a glass and something small. Upstairs went one notch up, with fine dining on the mezzanine plus live music and wine tastings. That split is the useful part. You can treat the downstairs as a proper wine bar without signing up for the full parade of courses.

The kitchen cooks contemporary French with the odd local accent. Recent plates have included scallop carpaccio with crab rillettes, bafun uni and caviar, Norwegian salmon in a curry beurre blanc, and aged Cherry Valley duck breast with roasted kabocha. None of it is cheap, and the postcode makes no apology. Sit downstairs, ask what has been opened today, and let the people pouring steer. The wall has more stories than the menu.

Order this

Ask what is open from the wine wall, Scallop carpaccio with crab rillettes, bafun uni and caviar, Norwegian salmon in curry beurre blanc, Aged Cherry Valley duck breast with roasted kabocha

The damage

$$$$

Go

Evenings, on the relaxed ground floor for a glass; watch for the wine tastings and live music upstairs

Find it

Plaza Damansara, Bukit Damansara, Kuala Lumpur