Monthly Archives: December 2011

Eat Out Restaurant Review

Banana Leaf on Davie

Yay! I finally got to try this Malaysian restau­rant. I love South East Asian foods because their dishes are usu­ally so flavour­ful with a vari­ety of bright spices and herbs — sooo good! On this day, I went to with my friend for lunch. There are four loca­tions of the Banana Leaf restau­rant: on Broad­way, in Kit­si­lano, on Den­man, and on Davie. We vis­ited on the one on Davie. Their web­site is here. As we looked through the menu, we couldn’t decide on exactly which dishes to order. But then we saw this lunch combo for $15/person, which includes a choice of three main dishes from their list and rice. We decided on the combo and we chose: Ren­dang Beef, Sayaur Lemak and Fish Fil­let in a caramelized sweet gin­ger gar­lic sauce. We also added the papaya salad for $2 with the lunch spe­cial. I per­son­ally love the Malaysian Roti Canai so we got an order of that as well.

Papaya Salad

The salad was very refresh­ing with fresh pink papaya chunks, canned pineap­ple chunks, fresh salad greens, toma­toes, yel­low bell pep­pers topped with shred­ded coconut, peanuts and a tangy refresh­ing dress­ing. It was very appe­tiz­ing and the dress­ing wasn’t very oily, which was per­fect for the rich­ness of the main dishes that followed.

Roti Canai

The Roti Canai is an Indian-influenced Malaysian dish. It is basi­cally a flat flaky pas­try (bread) served with a curry dip­ping sauce ($5). The bread itself was a lit­tle sweet, I thought I tasted some caramel and coconut flavour in the bread with­out the sauce. Maybe it is the fat (Ghee?) they used in it to make it so flaky and yummy. :) The sauce was very good as well, it was a rich coconut curry sauce. I loved it.

Main Dishes

Served with Steamed Rice

I wish I could take more pho­tos of the dishes but my cam­era ran out of bat­tery right after I took the photo above. The Redang Beef was a coconut curry braised with lean beef. It was very flavour­ful and a bit spicy, I thought it wasn’t too spicy. Sauce + Steamed Rice = Good­ness. The Fish Fil­let was our favourite, it was sweet and savoury, the flavour of Chi­nese wine was also promi­nent. The fish fil­let was very ten­der and fresh. The best part of the dish was the sauteed onions and scal­lions — where the flavours were con­cen­trated. The dish was a lit­tle over-seasoned if just eaten alone but per­fect with steamed rice. So good, but a bit oily. The Sayur Lemak was a very mild coconut curry braised mixed veg­gies, a good way to bal­ance off the stronger flavours of the two meat dishes. It was so mildly flavoured that you can just eat it with­out rice.

Con­clu­sion:

The ser­vice was good, the servers were polite and nice. The food was very good and fresh. It wasn’t very busy so the dishes came pretty quickly. The inte­rior was very com­fort­able and quiet as well.

Ambi ence: 3.5/5
Food: 4.5/5
Ser­vice: 4/5
Value: 3.5/5

Banana Leaf on Davie on Urbanspoon

Eat Out Travel

Yummy in Las Vegas: Part One

Yummy in Las Vegas! Just shortly before the win­ter hol­i­days, my mom and I went to Las Vegas for a 4 days, 3 nights trip. Besides just check­ing out the dif­fer­ent hotels and attrac­tions, of course we had to have buf­fet. Just edit­ing and upload­ing the pho­tos of food reminded me of all the yummy flavours! :P We had a 3 meals of buf­fet, one at Bel­la­gio and two at Trea­sure Island (given we were stay­ing there so we had awe­some discounts).

This post is part one of my Las Vegas trip, the first buf­fet that we went to was at Bel­la­gio. Bel­la­gio is also famous for their humon­gous foun­tain. Since my friend strongly rec­om­mended their buf­fet so we had to go try. Din­ner was $29.95/adult, plus taxes.

Let’s tackle the Bel­la­gio buffet!

The buf­fet had so many sta­tions, the first one I went to was the meat sta­tion (as you can see from my first plate). I had some roasted Kurobuta pork with BBQ sauce and Wagyu beef. They were really ten­der and weren’t dry at all! I per­son­ally liked the pork more than the beef because I thought the beef wasn’t as flavour­ful. The Ital­ian sausage was also very deli­cious and well flavoured.

I also had some rotis­serie chicken, which was right beside the prime rib roast (like pic­tured). :) My mom (being Asian) asked me why I got chicken and not other stuff like seafood. (LOL) Well, doesn’t the chicken look good? It was really ten­der, juicy and deli­cious, so why not?

Before I went for my sec­ond plate, I saw another lady sit­ting close to our table with (lit­er­ally) a moun­tain of crab legs on her plate which made me won­der if they were THAT good. So for the sec­ond round, I went for the crab legs, fish, prime rib roast some Chi­nese veg­gies. Being a Chi­nese, I would think that the buf­fet wouldn’t offer authen­tic Asian flavours. But to my sur­prise, the greens were really good with gar­lic flavour and the crunch of toasted sesame seeds (although not the usual sus­pect, it turned out pretty good). The fish (for­got what kind) was really good — ten­der and fresh. As for the Alaskan/Snow crab legs, it wasn’t really as good as I expected. The tex­ture was a lit­tle tough, I thought. The prime rib roast really (kind of) blew me away. :D It was even more ten­der that the Wagyu beef I had ear­lier, I also helped myself to some au jus and mush­rooms. It was so juicy and ten­der but still had good tex­ture in the meat and the au jus added so much beef flavour. The mush­room on the other hand, tasted WAY bet­ter than they looked, they paired so well with the beef!

How can one for­get about dessert? There were so many kinds, my stom­ach can’t fit all the of them! We had the flan — good but could be bet­ter. Rasp­berry macroon — not bad, but pretty big for a macroon. The one beside it was some tart topped with meringue — for­got what it tasted like.

The one on the left was a choco­late mouse cake — very good pre­sen­ta­tion, and tasted good. The other one was a cof­fee cup, lay­ered with cof­fee cream, cus­tard and topped with whipped cream — so good, prob­a­bly the best out of these desserts. We also had the Tiramisu (don’t have a good photo of if), but it wasn’t remarkable.

So…that pretty much sums up my buf­fet at Bel­la­gio. There were also some other lit­tle things I had, like the cock­tail shrimp (so sweet and plump), a bowl of very, very, salty miso soup etc. I was SOOO full after, which is why I typ­i­cally don’t enjoy buf­fet too much because I don’t have a huge appetite. But of course, Las Vegas is an excep­tion. Hope you are as hun­gry read­ing this as I was while writ­ing this post. :) I think the price was totally worth it given the fresh­ness and vari­ety of the food.

Wait! There is a Part 2 com­ing soon, STAY TUNED.

Buffet (Bellagio) on Urbanspoon

Baking Recipes

Cranberry Pistachio Biscotti

It is that time of the year again, this recipe is one of my favourites. The colour is also per­fect for Christ­mas. It might be hard to find raw pis­ta­chio nuts so you can also sub­sti­tute with other nuts. I have tried mak­ing this recipe with almonds but my favourite is still pis­ta­chios (it might be a bit pricey but it is well worth it). I have illus­trated this recipe step-by-step instead of upload­ing pho­tos, it is so easy to make! It was a good quick recipe to make since I was scram­bling to bake them before Christmas.

Made some illus­tra­tions for fun!



They are so crunchy and are loaded with the pis­ta­chio nuts which bal­ance well with the tart taste of the cran­ber­ries. I think I eat too much every time I make them. This year they became a part of my hand­made cookie col­lec­tion presents. :)

Note: These are my own illus­tra­tions, if you would like to use them for your web­site, please pro­vide a link to by blog. Much appreciated!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
%d bloggers like this: