I'm writing this review from our private deck in room 11 at the Malabar House. Located in the Fort Kochin area, the hotel is a little Indian jewel. The grounds are lovely, the rooms beautiful and the food is excellent. It's a short walk or auto-rickshaw ride (hang on!) to most of the major sights in the area. Travellers with physical issues should ask for a ground floor room as the circular staircase is a bit daunting, and there is no elevator. The splash pool is the perfect way to wash off the inevitable dust of a day of Indian sightseeing. Beautiful contemporary art and free WiFi add to the stay. The staff is charming and live music in the courtyard is enchanting. Highly recommended! Try and take a sunset tour of the harbour, it's worth the time.

Overall, this is a decent mid price hotel with attractive outdoor spaces including dining area.
We, however, were given a totally unsatisfactory room - #6. The air conditioning was broken (outside temps were in the 90s), one wall was covered with mildew, the lock on the room door was extremely difficult to manipulate, and the toilet stopped flushing after 3 or 4 uses. We did have a semi-private gravel patio area but no chairs were provided until we specifically requested them. To the management's credit, they did transfer us to a satisfactory room for our second night, but we spent one very unpleasant night before that happened. This is certainly not a luxury hotel and not worthy of the Relais and Chateaux chain.

We stayed here over Christmas 2011, in a beautiful first floor suite with a huge outdoor seating area. The interior design here is spectacular - sophisticated art, both traditional and contemporary - with large comfy four-poster beds. The feel is open and airy, the bar is stylish. The courtyard restaurant has high-quality, Indian-European fusion food, though it's not cheap. They offer classical music or dance at night, which is lovely. Breakfast is nice, though staff felt overstretched at time, which at these prices is not what you expect. But the location is fantastic, and the four-handed massage we had was great. For our taste, Fort Cochin feels a little bit of a sophisticated tourist ghetto, slightly removed from the reality of India which surrounds it. But go expecting a bit of a classy heritage theme park, and you won't be disappointed. And the hotels in Kochi don't come better than this!

Had we our last night dinner at this pricy restaurant (compare to a lot of good restaurants malabar is very expensive, of course if we do the sum in our own currency, the people eat there would think it costs peanuts) I was very disappointed by this place.
First, the menu is not interesting. I didn't go there for western food, but most of their dishes are quite westernized.
Second, there are a few products were not available on the menu so made it even harder to choose.
Third, the service is terrible.
1) they only provide WIFI for whoever stays in the hotel, well, a 'fancy place' like that can afford to provide WIFI to whoever eats there and spends a lot of money, people go there won't sit around and use their Internet for many hours without eating.
2) they forgot my order, and they forgot several things we have asked for. BAD!
3) they gave the people next to us chilled wine glass, and had their wine in an ice bucket, but they didn't do the same for us. When we asked them to put our white wine into the fridge, they were not happy.
4) we walked out only half full even we had one main course each. Unlike other restaurants, this place offers very little food.
The food tastes good, that's the only reason I gave them 2 stars.