Banana Leaf, Round One

I had the fortunate opportunity to visit both Malaysia and Singapore this summer. I, however, had the unfortunate opportunity of going to these countries with a Vietnamese tour (mom's idea). It was awful in nearly every way possible. I hated my fellow tourists. I wanted to choke them, I hated them so much. SIGH...just thinking about them gets my blood boiling. How some people can be so incredibly ignorant and disrespectful to different cultures...it amazes me. It really does. They didn't want to learn anything about Singapore and Malaysia. Our Vietnamese tour guide made sweeping generalizations about the countries, added their offensive remarks about the natives, and just didn't contribute anything interesting that I couldn't have learned myself through a basic read-through of Wikipedia.

The greatest offense, though, was that all the food booked through the tour was crappy Chinese-Vietnamese food. We literally ate the same dishes, three times a day for our whole seven-day tour. Boiled chicken with salt (like, literally a small bowl of salt on the side), tofu with tomatoes, bland fish, vegetable broth, and white rice. We ate that every single day. Not once did they offer any local cuisine to us. I wanted to go out on my own to get food, but it wasn't even as if the tour allowed free time for us to go out on our own to eat. The only free time we had was late night and by that time, I was so tired from being around idiotic people all day that I just wanted to go to bed. SO, in conclusion, aside from eating a copious amount of delicious Malaysian durian at a roadside stand, my food experiences in these countries sucked.

I had heard about Banana Leaf in Milpitas for some years now, and they were always good reviews. I didn't feel a great urge to try it out myself until I came back from my trip, when I vowed I would finally enjoy the Singaporean/Malaysian meal I was so sadly denied during my times there. A few weekends ago, I finally had my chance when I went with my family as sort of a pre-Lunar New Years celebration. My overall experience? Pretty great, I must say. A few stand-out dishes below.

Their Thai tea was the best Thai tea I've ever had. It was the perfect combination of bitter tea and sweet milk.

I've never had Roti Prata before. I thought it was going to be like Indian naan bread, but this bread was flaky and light. It was accompanied by a curry dip, which was just so good with the roti. This was my favorite of the night.  You can also see the cooks hand-flipping the bread when you first come inside the restaurant. That topped the eating experience for me, to see how much skill it takes to make this seemingly simple bread. I would go to Banana Leaf just for this bread. I don't even need the other dishes. Just this and the curry dip. (Really triggering my cravings right now!)

Chicken/Beef Satay--the meat was sweet and juicy. Again, it was perfectly completed with a curryish sauce.

Tom Yaml Soup- hot and sour soup with hearty vegetables and shrimp. It was really cold that evening and after a long wait near the freezing breeze from the door to be seated, this was what I really needed to warm up and ready my palette for the dishes ahead.

One dish I really hated was the mango salad. It had a sweet and sour sauce on it that was just...blegh. I hate sweet and sour sauce and eating a whole salad drenched in it? Uhh...no.

 

I also found the wait staff at Banana Leaf to be very nice! They brought over crayons for my little cousin, which he thoroughly enjoyed.

One of the staff also took a liking to the little guy, and lifted him up with his high chair to play with him. It was very sweet, considering that they gave individualized attention to us even though it was a packed house that night.

I'm so glad I finally found a great place for Malaysian/Singaporean food. Sucks that I had to go back to the US to finally get that meal, but I'll take what I can get. I can't wait for Round 2, when I finally go with my travel partner, Tran. We'll stuff our faces with Roti Prata to erase our bad memories. It'll take a few trips to actually quash our memories, I'm sure, but that's fine by me!