As you may have noticed if you visit my blog, I like to cover some of the bad places I have eaten at, and not just the good ones.
So today I will tell you about my worst banana leaf I have ever had in Malaysia so far. Warning ?? – It’s pretty bad!
BananaBro? No thanks bro! ????????
Have you ever had that feeling when you first go into a restaurant and sit down at a table that you are not really welcome there, and you find yourself thinking of leaving even before you’ve seen the menu?
That’s how I felt at BananaBro, Kota Damansara, Petaling Jaya! ????
Almost as if they couldn’t be bothered attending to me. Still, I decided I would give it a fair chance, so I sat down and had a look at their menu.
The menu looked pretty good! The dishes looked really tasty and reasonably priced. Everything was going to be ok after all, I thought.
I hastily ordered a glass of ice water for my son Berry, who was rather hot and sweaty after walking around the local neighborhood with me trying to find the place on the map.
Or at least, I tried to. “Cannot. Only mineral water”, barked the waiter. “Oh, could I just have an ais kosong (cup of ice water) for my son while I’m ordering?” “No! I said only mineral water!”.
Hmm, first impression of this place really isn’t good at all. First red flag that they are trying to rip me off. I didn’t want to give in completely, so I asked for a glass of “limau ais” instead (lemon water with ice, the nearest thing they had to what I actually wanted).
Anyway, we knew what we wanted to eat (banana leaf), so I didn’t waste any more time and ordered 2 of them, one for me, one for Berry. And a plate of chicken Varuval. Really large pieces of succulent chicken, according to the picture! I was really looking forward to it at this point, and was perfectly willing to excuse the failure to provide a basic glass of water if the food turned out to be as good as it looked. Unfortunately, it wasn’t.
First the cold rice (even though it was lunch time and I had deliberately made sure not to be late so that the food wouldn’t be cold). It’s ok, the piping hot curry will warm it up and I won’t even notice, right? No way. Curry (we both opted for the chicken curry) was even colder.
The dahl was ok, but you can’t really mess dahl up can you, it’s pretty basic. The three vegetable dishes (3 types of vegetable are of course standard at banana leaf restaurants in Malaysia) today were an extremely greasy potato curry – so greasy that if you move it slightly to the left or slightly to the right on your banana leaf you get a really dark oil patch that looks like it is about to burn a hole through the leaf, raita with cucumber (this one was admittedly very nice),
and a mountain of really, really soggy deep fried bitter gourd rings encased in a bright red batter. The batter was redder than.. well, whatever the reddest thing you can think of is. God only knows how they made it that red.
Yet none of this was as bad as the chicken Varuval. The overall flavour/spices was ok, certainly nothing exceptionaI but not too bad; however only about 10% of the total mass of what was served was actually edible.
I would say the portion I received probably weighed about 100g, and appeared attractive enough from the outside, with a few nice big meaty-looking chunks.
But these meaty-looking chunks turned out to quite literally be giant pieces of bone with a little skin around them, cleverly concealed by the Varuval marinade that they had been cooked in.
Given that these large pieces made up about 80% of the plate, only the remaining 20g or so were fit for consumption, and of that we still opted to remove (an acceptable amount of) boney/general greasy unpleasant bits and thus my son ended up with about 5g of actual chicken each, or 1g of protein.
Luckily I hadn’t just finished in the gym! Hopefully the Rasam (spicy South Indian soup that is a standard component of banana leaf always provided in Malaysia), the mango chutney and the Halwa (Indian sweet, again standard) would cheer us up a bit. Oh, they’ve forgotten them!
So I put my hand up to attract the attention of the waiter and explain that he’d forgotten our Rasam, chutney and halwa. OH! Hang on! There isn’t any, I am told. Must have run out – is Bananabro really that popular? ????
Wait, what is this he is telling me now? “we provide neither rasam, chutney nor halwa”..?!! Well I have never once come across a banana leaf in Malaysia where these do not come with the set. ????
We finish off our rice, minus the bright red soggy rings of course, and I ask if they can top up my son’s limau ais with some tap water, since he still has plenty of limau and ais left, but the water has gone. Nope, “not possible, you need to order a new one!” Ok then, not really even surprised at this point. ????
I do order a new one because my son is still thirsty (how could I not do so) and get ready to pay and exit the premises as soon as possible. I don’t bother asking for the bill and instead go straight to the checkout till. Eh? RM38(US$9)? RM7(US$1.5) for the 2 limau ais? ????
I add up the individual components and even taking into account the 2 limau ais we are still not close to rm38.????
My eyes then wander down to the bottom of the paper. 10% tax PLUS 6% service charge? Haha what? Where is this, the United States of America? Exactly what service are we talking about here. If anything I feel I should be entitled to a 6% discount for the lack of service. My son has finished his limau ais so I grab his hand and we do a runner. Well ok I pay first and then we do a runner. ????
I won’t be running back here again in a hurry, that’s for sure!
BananaBro Kota Damansara
Address: 25-1, Jalan PJU 5/9, Dataran Sunway, Kota Damansara, 47810 Petaling Jaya, Selangor
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