Sunday, October 21, 2007

Banana Leaf Is Too Crowded

Friday night, J and I met up with our friends M&N for dinner at this joint called Banana Leaf, which is a Malaysian, Indian, and Thai restaurant. Overall, the food was pretty tasty....but I wasn't too impressed with the service and the atmosphere at the restaurant. It was too crowded in there and all the tables are about an inch apart. It's just too crowded. I didn't like the layout of the restaurant at all. Besides how bad everything else was....at least the food was good. We decided to order a few dishes and share with everyone.

We started off with the Roti Prata, which is a multi-layered home made Indian bread dipped in curry sauce and the chicken satay. Both were excellent.

For our entrees, we decided on 4 dishes:
  • Mango Chicken (with green & red peppers in a spicy mango sauce served in a mango shell )
  • Malay Sizzling Black Pepper Prawns (with onions in a pepper sauce)
  • Penang Sizzling Prawns (with onion, green & red pepper with chef's special sauce)
  • Belachan KangKung (Ong Choy) -with Malay special shrimp paste sauce

We had the Hainan Seasoned Rice with turmeric to accompany our dishes.

The Mango Chicken had very nice flavors and the sauce accented the chicken very well. The presentation of the dish was very nice.

Both the prawn dishes were very good. The vegetables and sauces went very well with everything. It was very tasty.

The KangKung is similar to baby broccoli. I found a new vegetable that I like. It was good...not bitter at all like I thought it would be. Very satisfying.

For dessert, J and I ordered the Deep Fried Banana a la mode. The waitress told us it came with mango ice cream. I asked her if there was another kind of ice cream we could get instead -- she told us yes, vanilla. So I tell her I want the vanilla instead. She repeated my order back to me....but when they bring the dessert out, it's got mango ice cream. I didn't want to be picky, but didn't I specify I wanted vanilla? I had to remind them, so they took it back and brought the dessert out with the right ice cream. It's not that complicated, is it?

Anyway...the dessert was decent -- it doesn't compare to the other banana desserts I've had at other Asian restaurants. To be honest, I was kind of scary. The bananas were dipped in this really red-orange breading, because the dessert came out and there were 2 crescent shaped objects in the weirdest orange color. It was kind of scary. After the first few bites, it isn't too bad.

I say I would go back there....but during the week when it's less crowded.