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