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![[Metroactive Dining]](Mercury_files/toolbar_oz.gif){kind=small}
January 21, 2000
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Kay Yim: A partner in Banana Leaf, started the Malaysian restaurant in Milpitas when she grew tired of her high-tech job.
Banana Leaf's cuisine has familiar ring
By Sheila Himmel - Mercury News Restaurant Writer
A MONG the Southeast Asian cuisines that have become Silicon Valley staples, Vietnamese, Thai and Cambodian come to mind. Malaysian has yet to break through. This is good for the 6-month-old Banana Leaf restaurant in that there's no competition. It can also scare people away. "Sometimes they stand outside and look at the menu, then leave," says partner Kay Yim. Those people are missing something good. The cuisine draws from Malaysia's three ethnic groups: Malay, Chinese and Indian. It also borrows a bit from its neighbor, Thailand. Much of the menu, then, turns out to be familiar. Decor, also, is comforting, rather than challenging. Banana Leaf is an oasis of under-$10 white-tablecloth dining in McMarthy Ranch. The previous culinary milestone set by this Milpitas shopping complex was the area's first In-N-Out Burger. Hot and sour flavors One distinction of Banana Leaf is the balance of hot and sour flavors. Tamarind comes to play more than lemon grass. Satays are popular. The signature rendang (rendang beef, rendang chicken) is a dry curry. And from 15th-century Chinese immigrants come noodle dishes. Aromatic rather than spicy, some of them taste a little bland. Lunch specials come with soup of the day and Malay coconut rice. At lunch, the soup is always vegetarian. Recently, it was a light vegetable broth infused with chile oil and lime juice. At dinner, there may be oxtail soup, among other choices.
Banana Leaf
 Where: 182 Ranch Dr., Milpitas Hours: 11 a.m. - 3 p.m., 5 - 10 p.m. Mondays - Thursday; 11 a.m. - 3 p.m., 5 - 10:30 p.m. Fridays; 11 a.m. - 10:30 p.m. Saturdays Information: (408) 719-9811 Parking: Free lot Et cetera: Beer and wine. Wheelchair access. American Express, Mastercard, Visa
Ice water is served with lemon, which is nice, but service at the lunch rush can be a little jumbled. On a recent weekday, first up was the mango prawn entree ($12.95). This was attractive, with plump prawns spilling out of two mango halves. Green and red peppers added color. However, the sauce lacked oomph, and the entree needed rice. Next came the popular appetizer roti praha ($2.95). The multilayered and buttery Indian bread is dipped in curry sauce. Banana Leaf's roti is tasty but thin. Then everything else arrived at once: There are two dozen vegetarian items on the menu. Noodle dishes include pad Thai, clay-pot noodles and Indian spicy fried noodles. A staple of Malaysian cuisine, seafood is well-represented by prawns, particularly, but also seabass, salmon and squid. Uses for banana leaves The banana leaf is more than a pretty green thing to serve on. Some dishes are cooked on banana leaves, a practice traced to wood-fire cooking in rural areas of the tropics. There, a banana leaf on the bottom of the pot prevents burning and sticking. It's also a way to package street food. And in a restaurant, banana plants look nice in pots. This attractive former bagel shop now has banana-yellow walls, dark wood trim, sky-blue cellings and Malay art. Parking in this part of McCarthy Ranch is not a headache, even at lunch. For dessert, fried bananas a la mode ($4.95) could have been crispier, but they weren't greasy, either. Next time, I'd end with the signature banana crepes ($5.95). Yim, a Malaysian of ethnic Chinese descent, worked in high-tech sales and marketing. A few years into it, she realized, "I'm not that excited about technology. You have to love what you do." Banana Leaf is a work-in-progress but with a customer-service orientation firmly in place. After two months, the large vegetarian menu was added in response to requests. Even some of the food names, like "mango delight," were customer suggestions. Contact Sheila Himmel at
shimmel@sjmercury.com or (408) 920-5926. Fax (408) 271-3786 |
