Damn you and your culinary lies, Gabriel (which have so irked me that I have had to waste valuable sleep time writing this, but unfortunately I exist only in service to Truth.)

a) Singaporean restaurant food excels only when it comes to Japanese and other European cuisines. Top-notch Chinese restaurants in Malaysia are comparable if not better than Malaysian ones. (see more below).

b) I will admit there are quite a few lousy stalls around, but I refuse to believe that a few weeks of properly meandering around the KL area will lead an objective observer to show that there is less diversity of offering ,although it is, in fairness, far more spread out geographically, so a novice wanderer among the KL culinary byways may go astray. NO ONE I know who has spent more than a week in KL outside of their hotel restaurant still thinks KL has less variety especially when you consider that the indian and malay coffeeshops are far more prolific - for instance, you can't get good banana leaf rice outside of Apollo or indeed the Little India area, although if someone is willing to correct me I would greatly appreciate it - and offer more exotic delights such as the Ramli Camel Burger (TM). I can think of at least six "standard" Malaysian hawker dishes I can't find easily reproduced in Singapore (to be fair, not non-existent though, just difficult to dig up); I can only think of two "standard" Singaporean ones (mee pok and Singaporean style hay mee) which cannot be simply found in KL.

(to someone else reading this now: Katong laksa is a reigonal specialty of sorts (insofar as Singapore is capable of regional specialties) - it's not a "standard" Singaporean hawker dish. Which is why I didn't mention Penang hay mee or Kajang satay or Kelantanese curry)

(to yet someone else: alright, I agree you can't find roti john or the thomson crispy pratas readily reproduced in KL either - although I refuse to call the thomson crispy pratas standard hawker fare)

(man, food brings out passionate feelings - to another of my gadfly critics: YA KUN KAYA TOAST IS NOT HAWKER FOOD! DO YOU SEE ME FLOGGING IPOH WHITE COFFEE HERE?)

c) I resent being labelled as a patriotic Malaysian by implication, and I demand you rephrase that paragraph - as you know I have invested a lot of intellectual credibility in rejecting nationalism/patriotism of any kind so for you to impute such motives to me is defamatory. I speak purely out of objective and prolonged exposure to both Singaporean and Malaysian culinary environments - again, something many of your correspondents lack.

d) Singaporean servings are smaller???? Find me a place in Singapore wehre the standard 4 SGD bowl of laksa is larger than the average RM3.50 bowl of Penang hay mee in KL??? Impossible. [Gabriel: Hello. S$4 is for a bowl in an air con place. And RM3.50 is about a third of S$4. Like this I should compare a S$6 bowl of laksa with your stupid RM3.50 bowl.] I admit chicken rice portions can be small at times; ditto for wan tan mee. But not for noodle or other heavier foodstuffs - with the notable exception of char kuay teow (KL does it way better, but they do tend to be parsimonious for some reason - costs of cockles maybe? -although I'm not sure the larger quantity of floppy, tasteless, sickly sweet kuay teow that constitues the average Singaporean offering of char kuay teow is a plus point) [Gabriel: That depends on if you like sweet sauce. I do. And my sister's Malaysian friend agrees that Malaysian portions are smaller.]

(the above observation excludes shopping center and commercial food courts - those are almost uniformly sub-par in both quantity and quality both in Singapore or in Malaysia)

e) At least Malaysian hawkers don't put ketchup in won ton mee!! [Gabriel: I like ketchup. What's wrong with ketchup?]

f) The numerical/statistical argument is irrelevant when we are talking about relative standards of quality. There are, no doubt, numerically more good Ampang yong tau foo places in KL than there are in Singapore. But that's a facetious argument which serves only to obfuscate and befuddle the hoi polloi - does it matter if there are 10,000 ampang yong tau foo stalls relative to the 100 in Singapore? (no there aren't 10,000 stalls, in case some people are too literal minded). I feel confident that the quality distribution of said 10,000 AYTF stalls will still occupy a larger percentile of the sample than vis-a-vis the 100 Singaporean ones.

Okay, it's not quite normally distributed - and there are specializations, which is why I will admit there are more dry mee pok stalls or teochoew muay (the soup-over-rice with fish slices kind of porridge, not the brothy type with peanuts and Chinese pickles) in terms of quality and quantity in Singapore.

I could also do a lot of dissection into the cultural bias of your sample, but let's not go there.

g) Singapore's better restaurants provide better Continental and Japanese cuisine. As I said earlier, for "ta chao" (big fry) or even Lei Garden / Overseas / anything by the Crystal Jade (the expensive Crystal Jade, not the noodle houses) or Tung Lok cartel-style fine Chinese dining, Malaysian restaurants not only hold their own or are superior, but are measurably cheaper PPP-adjusted dollar for dollar (I'm not talking about exchange rate differentials here).

(the food fight goes on - to Chris: I don't consider dim sum local fare - but I admit I am ambivalent about whether Malaysian or Singaporean restaurants are better, because they are surprisingly bloody different in implementation, outside of the sine qua non offerings (har kao, siew mai, char siew pao, carrot cake, chee cheong fun))

Arguably there are better Thai restaurants (i have to admit, arroy thai and renn thai are superlative), but not better upscale Indonesian ones (other than sanur and house of sundanese
food, there are at least 4 superior ones in KL I can think of - although you wil no doubt pull out the demographics argument again). Honestly, I fail to see how the "Taste of Singapore" is denied to Malaysians - the only thing one misses out

So tell me how does having more al dente pasta or black truffles smorgasbords or Wagyu steaks communicate the "Taste of Singapore" to your own affluent population?

I would also point out that "the good cooks in Singapore" are largely foreign imported - most good local homegrown talent either stay with their hawker stalls or they go the disgusting franchise path - a horrible phenomenon that I am sadly starting to see in KL - . Those that have opened up proper restaurants (again, outside of the cartels mentioned above) still do not measure up, in my honest opinion, to their counterparts in Malaysia.

The argument is about hawker/local food, not foreign cuisine , to which again I will freely concede that Singaporean expat chefs can do far better.

h) As for Malaysian food upsetting the fragile digestive systems of your sensitive correspondents - well, what can I say. One needs repeated and prolonged acclimitisation to enjoy the tastes while suffering none of the consequences:) KL has no wussy nanny-State-fiat-imposed "Use less oil" or "Ask for vegetables" campaign.

I might also point out I have concentrated on KL, and have not even begun including Penang or Ipoh. Johor doesn't count because it is, quote (sic): "spoil market by all the Singaporeans.", and I don't know enough about Kota Baru or Negri Sembilan.

[Gabriel: Not having either the time or desire to spend weeks in Ma-laysia on culinary adventures, I shall have to defer to other opinions and seek the input of other connoisseurs of Malaysian hawker food on the relative merits of the two countries' food.]