Banana Leaf

Good food and service! I got the Pawn Mee which I would recommend. Also, they have the best Pad Tai in town!

Service here was top notch. While it was indeed a little empty when I went, they were very attentive and accommodating.
The food is where this place really shines! For apps, we got the flat bread with the sauce and man was it tasty!
The thing with southern Asian cuisine is that the aroma of the food can be quite intense which I personally love!
Would recommend getting the chicken rice as opposed to white rice if you need a side of rice. Full of flavor in every bite!

Witness the server was insulting the customers. The food was not as good little bland (Chicken pad Thai) and the server (middle age man) was literally insulting his customers without giving any break. He’s a server, he should try his best to make his customers happy and to return. Unfortunately, this guy was looking down on his customers, awful attitude, talked nonsense and show no respect. I hope the manager spend sometime lecturing this guy little more on how he should be treating all of the customers. Remember regardless of where they came from or what their ethnicity, they are still your customers, please treat them with respect. Lets be kind to one another.

Roti Kanai, Mango Chicken, fried tofu are some of my favorite foods at Banana Leaf. Make sure you get Über or Taxi go tehre, almost no parking places and Philadelphia Parking Authority is always there to give you a traffic violation if you are over 3 minutes — IF you are lucky to find a parking spot in that crazy area.
I am going there again, this time taking the Über. Just beacuse the FOOD IS SOOOOOO GOOD!!!

I’ve brought a couple of large groups here (~30) and also come with just a couple of friends and they do an amazing job getting out food and making sure your needs are met. The food is amazing, with plenty of vegetarian options, and how can I leave without mentioning their roti canai? As a vegetarian, I also love their veggie clay pot, which is easily shared between two people.

Horrible experience. We went there to celebrate one of my friend’s birthday. The server who brought the water dropped one of the glass of water on us and did not even bother to apologize. When we kind of joked with him, he went on and on without realizing what he is saying and even making some racist remarks. The remarks that he made, I cannot even write here and he thought that he was being funny. I don’t think anybody should really cross those lines in general only. We felt so uncomfortable that one of our friend said that she does not feel comfortable and we just left this place without eating food. I feel very sick the way they treat the customers.

Walked in looking for something new. This was my first time trying Malaysian food and I’m sooo glad I did! A mix of Thai, Javanese, Malay, and Indian, the menu is full of delicious choices that I’ve never had before. We started with the Roti Canai and the Shrimp Puffs. The Roti Canai is a puffy bread that you rip apart and dip into this awesome, savory curry sauce. The shrimp puffs are packed full of shrimp… much more than I would normally expect. I had the Indian Mee Goreng and my gf had the Thai Basil Noodles. My Indian Mee Goreng was amazing! A perfect mix of noodles, shrimp, chicken, and tofu. Tofu was crispy, not soggy and absorbed whatever the spice mix is, topped with ground peanut. I highly recommend this place and can’t wait to go back and try something new.

I hate to say it, but the food here just isn’t good. Penang is a little more expensive, but the food is significantly better.
The satay was good, but the pieces of chicken and beef could not be smaller.
The roti canai was good, but seemed to be cooked a bit inconsistently. Also, even though I wanted it, I thought it was wrong of the waiter (?) owner (?) to assume I wanted it before I even ordered.
It was pouring and I wanted soup, but I don’t eat fish or shellfish, so I wanted a soup with meat. I settled on the beef tripe noodle soup. The noodles were fine. The vegetables in the soup were gigantic and basically raw. The tripe was okay. The real issue was that the broth was absolutely vile. I figured it would be a beef broth, but I’m pretty sure it was cooked with tripe and maybe some other organ meats. It had a very off-​putting flavor and smell, and as a whole was entirely bland. The entire soup was like a very bland pot a feu. I ended up just throwing it out.
The hainanese chicken was fine. I don’t think it’s their fault, but I think because of all of the bones, it’s not for me. The flavor was fine. The real issue is that I asked the waitress if it came with rice and she said yes. The dish comes out and I ask if there’s rice with it and she points and says it’s under the chicken. It’s not. I motion for her to come over and ask for rice. She tries to upsell me and asks if I want chicken fried rice, which would’ve been another $ 8.50. I just wanted white rice, which they charged me for. For $ 10.25, you can bring me a bowl of white rice. In retrospect, I should’ve gotten the Hainanese chicken with rice, but I was very hungry and figured that would be a smaller portion of chicken.
A few other things that bothered me:
It was late when I got there, but they were open at least another hour to hour and a half. They were already in the process of cleaning the restaurant and it reeked of cleaning fluid.
There were only around 3 or 4 tables occupied, so plenty of space to seat me. They seated me next to a group of very loud, effeminate minorities drinking multiple large bottles of alcohol. I didn’t notice where they were seating me until it was too late and if I asked to move tables, I would’ve looked like a racist. I watched an Asian guy and a white guy (not there together) come in at various points during my meal, and they were seated farther from the loud group next to me.
Reading other reviews, the majority of things people seem to order and enjoy are basic Thai dishes I can get at a million other places in Chinatown and around Philly, so I don’t see why I’d go back here.

Huge menu with lots of delicious options! The pineapple fried rice is amazing and so is the pad thai. It is really big in there so it is easy to get seated, even when it is busy.

Ive heard great thing about this place before and it did not disappoint. Great Malaysian food and smoothies along with a few thai classics like pineapple fried rice and pad thai. i had the seafood lo mein and it was great, not too heavy and great flavors. My group members had the pad thai and thai basil and they were both great. Recommendations to try are the martabak (spelling?) the mee siam, and the spicy indian beef. Restaurant is BYOB as well

I came to Banana Leaf for a birthday dinner because of a recommendation from my friend who raved about this place. I ordered Pad Thai and my aunt ordered a coconut rice dish with veggies. Both our dishes were extremely bland. My Pad Thai had almost no taste, and hardly had anything on the noodles. The service was good and the food came quickly, but the food itself left much to be desired.
This place is BYO which is nice, and it’s also beautifully painted inside. There is a good amount of seating so it doesn’t usually get too crowded.

A BYO with some great menu items. Great bang for your buck. If you’re looking for a cheap option for a byo this place will satisfy your tastes. The service is ok. Nothing too spectacular. The Pad Thai is a large portion with very tasty tofu. The mango chicken is sweet and filling. However they did just remove sushi from their menu which was disappointing. When sushi was on the menu it was a fully encompassed Asian menu, you could find anything but now it’s more just Thai.

Amazing food. Rarely has it been that all the dishes we ordered, were so good. The menu has a lot of variety. I absolutely loved Seafood Lo mein noodles, Indian mee goreng and poh piah. Even the simple litchi water was sublime and refreshing.
Definitely going to make this a regular place. :)

Let’s start off with the roti canai (Indian Pancake) with chicken and potato curry. It is a must get. Maybe two or three. $ 3.95, for one piece of roti is a bit pricey considering how thin it is, you will not get any fulfillment for this. But it is so good!
I’ve passed by here many time and thought it would be like a similar place I’ve been to do so I’ve only avoided it until the boyfriend brought me here the other night. I was pretty impressed and is still craving that roti canai.
I wasn’t sure what to order so I went through the Unilocal pictures until I found something that caught my eye. The Indian Mee Goreng (Indian style stir-​fried egg noodles in an authentic mild dried squid sauce with tofu, potatoes, shrimp, egg, grounded peanuts, and bean sprouts.) This was just tasty enough with the shrimp shells crispy enough for me to just bite and eat through.
I like how fast the food some out and it’s HOT. I will definitely come back here for the two dishes that I got to try. How about two pieces of roti next time though?
Going through the menu, I also wanted to try the roti telur because it is filled with eggs and onions but the boyfriend and I did not like it as much as the roti canai. There is a lot of onions if you like that though.

Pretty standard Malaysian/​Thai food but there was seriously some restaurant direction Asian confusion, with the Chinese food, Malaysian food, Thai food, and then there was sushi as well.
Got the Thai basil noodles — slightly on the greasy side, and was a bit spicy but turns out I liked the spicyness.
Visit #2: Got the Singaporean noodles. So flavorful, and the egg in it made it all come together. Delicious!
Really loud, good for BYOs (this was my first BYO) but not good if you’re trying to have a conversation.

Came here with a large group for dinner — very spacious seating compared to most other Chinatown restaurants so good safe choice if you have a big group.
Food is above average and very similar in quality compared to Penang right around the corner. Everything was prepared not too salty or sweet and not too dry which can easily be the case for fried rice dishes.
My two favorites are the Thai pineapple fried rice and captain noodles. Thai pineapple fried rice has a lightly sweet but also savory taste that melts in your mouth and the captain noodles are smooth, savory, and flavorful with each bite. I recommend sharing these 2 dishes and most others since they are fairly large portions.
Ambience is casual with medium to loud noise since many people come here traditionally after the bars or a party. Service is quick and gets the job done. Enjoy!

Horrendous service. The server was rather rude. I asked if we could split the check and he just barked a no. Then he said it’s too busy to split the checks which I think is bs because they wanted the automatic tip at the end. I wouldn’t mind if they said it nicely but it definitely ruined the mood.
The portions are also ridiculously small. The shrimp in most of the dishes were super small, it was the size of my pinky. (For reference, I have normal lady hands) the Indian pancakes were so thin, it was like the utz potatoes chips. And everyone left hungry.
Will not return.

This is my second visit to Banana Leaf and to be honest I’m rather disappointed. Having lived in Malaysia for over 20 years I can’t say that the food here represented the taste that I remembered. On my last visit here I managed to try a few different dishes. Sambal Petai, Belachan Kangkung, Baby Oyster Omelette, Char Kueh Teow and Golden Fried Squid was the few items that I ordered.
I can’t say I had a single dish that I was impressed with. The Belachan Kangkung dish didn’t had enough belachan (shrimp paste) in it, so you can’t really taste the belachan which makes the dish delicious. The oyster omelette tasted like scramble eggs top with dried over cooked oyster. The egg was burned and they didn’t use baby oyster as they should. It was just the regular oysters. This dish was prepped completely different than it should be. The authentic baby oyster omelette is moist when you cut into the dish rather than dry up burn egg.
The char kueh teow noodle dish uses a ready made/​instant Vietnamese flat noodles so it didn’t taste authentic at all. Banana Leaf should have kept to how it’s prepped in Malaysia by using real kueh teow (thick flat rice) noodles instead of cutting corners and uses the instant version to save cost
I would never ordered the golden fried squids if I was here by myself as this is the second time I’ve been disappointed by it. It’s very dry and the squid have a lot of breading on it so you will be eating more breading than the actual squid.
The only thing that was semi decent was the Sambal Petai, a delicious dish if they could have gotten some fresh petai instead of frozen (not Banana Leaf fault since you cannot get them fresh here in the US). Frozen petai is not crunchy like fresh petai.
The wait staff was friendly and the food was served prompt. I was really surprised that they charge for the white rice even if you ordered food from the entrée menu. Most restaurant will at least give you the first bowl free with each entrée purchase.
Hopefully they will try to stay true to the real Malaysian cooking and not cut corners to save on cost. Let more people be able to enjoy true Malaysian food instead of the sub par taste.

My first time was few years ago, and as far back as I can remember, it wasn’t that bad, actually it was good.
Last week I was in the mood for something exotic– for lunch I mean.
So, I hit Banana Leaf on a weekday during lunch hours. I ordered the Thai Pineapple Fried Rice, which was described on the menu as «Fried rice with shrimp, cashew nuts, fresh pepper, egg, and shrimp pasted served in a pineapple.»
Intrigued? I was too. I was already sold on that description.
As expected, my to-​go Thai– style pineapple fried rice order, came in a take-​out container, not in half pineapple shell. I wasn’t disappointed!
Pineapples: I wasn’t sure if the pineapples were not quite ripe enough or just canned.
Cashews: Sort of stale.
Shrimp: It was such a nasty surprise to see the veins on the back of the shrimps, each one of them. Yuckkkks! Enough said!
Fried rice: Too wet and sticky. I’m not an expert, but I certainly don’t recall asking for my rice to be soaked in too much oil.
One more chance, you ask?! On a scale of maybe to absolutely; A.B.S.O.L.U.T.E.L.Y NOT!
Two Unilocal

Really annoyed by my last visit (Tuesday night). After coming here many many times, I’ve seen Banana Leaf fall lower and lower in the quality of the food they serve.
I felt bad bringing my friends here because the dishes they ordered were basically not what was written on the menu. First, my curry chicken which I order every time I come here was so bland. Second, the pineapple fried rice my friend ordered barely had any shrimp in it and the shrimp that was there wasn’t veined and was barely cooked. Third, my other friend ordered the salted fish, which was basically just steamed vegetables soaked in salt water with little bits of fish scattered around.
The restaurant was not crowded, so not sure what went wrong here. Disappointing.