Banana Leaf

I am so sorry to write this. The server was very nice. Unfortunately, the food — nearly all of it – was awful. I wanted so much to like it (I lived in Sri Lanka for four months and loved the food), but this food got worse with each bite. Basically, they warmed up tired food from the lunch buffet and charged me $ 23 plus tax, plus tip (so $ 30) for dry, flavorless rice, mediocre fried balls of something spicy, dried mini chicken pieces, a boiled egg, and an average custard for dessert. Nothing was fresh — nothing. Just awful. The only thing with any flavor was the fried ball (the other fried item was greasy and boring). Where were the brilliant curries and spices of Sri Lanka?
In retrospect, I should have ordered a simple curry, but someone recommended the combo special. Anyway, I’m giving them two stars for being polite — but I’ll never be back.

Just went there for dinner. The food on the buffet was cold, and the dhal was dried up in the pan. The guy served us water and never came back for a drink order. This place is an embarrassment to Sri Lankan food!

Terrible, completely unacceptable service. Arrived at 7:15, ordered, then waited… waited…waited. A few minutes before 9:00, we gave up and asked to get our food as takeout. And this in a virtually empty restaurant.
The staff told us that the kitchen was busy with big catering orders. But if they are not going to function as a restaurant, they should let the customers know.
The food was OK, but the experience was so bad that we will never go back.

This place is a hidden gem! The food is very flavorful and delicious! It’s got just the spiciness it needs! Totally recommend the shrimp curry with hoppers and the lampris!

The wait time is horrible. Saw a group wait about 5 mins to be seated then just seated themselves because no one came. Ordered a drink and it came after about 30 minutes. The service was awful. One waitress for about 6 tables. A very disappointing experience.

My review is a bit biased since I would like to see this restaurant do well. I had the buffet on Sunday night and it was excellent. After reading the reviews on Unilocal I did not have high expectations and so I was pleasantly surprised to see that the restaurant was well maintained and that the service was prompt. The buffet did not suffer from greasy tired dishes; it was clear that it had been refreshed since opening at noon. I was also pleased that the food was not overly salty.
The buffet items did not include hoppers, string hoppers, lamprais, etc. which is to be expected since those are the specialties of this restaurant.

This has become one of my favorite restaurants in DC. I’ve been here at least 15 times now, and it never disappoints. The food and service are excellent! Both the normal menu and buffet are definitely affordable and more than worth the price. My favorite dish is the deviled chicken, which is pretty spicy. I have a bunch of vegetarian friends who love all of their vegetarian dishes. A very enthusiastic five stars! I love this place!

I went to Banana Leaf yesterday and I was not pleased with the menu as most foods were mixed with rice, instead of rice being on the side .They say they are vegetarian, but their menu isn’t. Very few vegetarian things there. I got these Spring rolls and they were like thick dried, fried bread with a tiny bit of lentals or potatoes
vegies inside. Their food lacks fresh vegetables or freshness. I did not feel very good after eating their food. I would not go back. The only thing I can say is the owner and workers were nice but the food is not.

Dont go by Unilocal 3.5 rating as this place is worth much higher rating. I had the 3 course meal which they offer and it was excellent. People who are not a fan of spicy food then this place is on higher side. The desserts are amazing. Would surely visit again !

I have no idea why I didn’t like Banana Leaf better, I wish I did. I live very close to this restaurant and I just didn’t like it. In all honesty it was my first time having Sri Lankan food, so I’m not sure if it was the restaurant I wasn’t impressed with or the cuisine, but I got the Vegetarian Curry Assortment for take out, the portions were very good, two people could have shared and they could have been left overs.
The vegetable curry mix was on a big bed of yellow rice, and had a few different curries over it. None I could say was great the mashed yellow potato curry had a strange after taste, there was just no great curry, I don’t know anything about Sri Lankan food but I didn’t love what I had. I was left feeling very underwhelmed and I thought the food was way too salty too. The portions were good though, and they had a quick turnaround time for takeout. I might go back again to try something else.

We went with a group of ppl from work for lunch. The restraunt was empty and we were a little suspicious. The buffet DIDNOT interest me and a couple of others so we ordered from the menu. I ordered the vege lampri with vegge cutlet but i got the fish instead. I loved the food. very different from indian food but with enough spice and flavor. I would have give five stars except for that mishap with the vege cutlet. The restraunt was empty too for them to miss the customers requirements.
The rest if my freinds who got the items from the menu said they liked it as well. Some got the lamb lampri, the devilled fish and the roti with chicken curry. It was all wiped clean from the leaf.
The food was reasonably priced too. Will be back for more!

More interesting than good. I ordered the special, which came cooked in a banana leaf and came with pork, rice, vegetables, cashews, and egg. It was very spicy, and pretty good, but probably not something I would order again now that I’ve had it once.
I agree with some of the other comments that the service is not quite up to American standards yet. We were the only guests in the restaurant but still needed to flag down the staff for water refills and the check. But perhaps it will get better with time.

According to my Sri Lankan friend, this place serves fairly authentic Sri Lankan food. Indeed, the food was good, and the portion size was generous.
However, the service here isn’t all that great. First off, the chef forgot to include all the ingredients in my dish. I ordered the biriyani, which was good, but was missing the slice of pineapple that was listed in the ingredients on the menu. Additionally, we had to wait a decent amount of time for our checks to arrive after we had finished, despite the restaurant only being 20% full.
Other restaurant qualities that brought down the experience was the cheap and artificial décor (fake bricks), poor sense of style, and misspellings on the menu. Moreover, the tablecloth for our table was filthy.
Despite the food tasting good, all the negative qualities of this place bring down the overall experience. At the end of our meal, we both agreed that this place was overpriced.

My sister had just finished her book reading at Politics and Prose and we are both famished after the excitement of the event and great conversations. How convenient that we spy a South Asian-​looking place directly across Connecticut from the bookstore. We hazard the crossing, heels and all.
The place has a green but spare décor with touristic images of Sri Lanka. Not romantic, not elegant and just casual. The waiter was quite pleasant and service was fast enough. The food however was spotty.
I got the veggie kotthu, which is chopped up pieces of wheat pancake (parotta), egg, and vegetables fried together (somewhat like a left over hash, or what the English would call «Bubble and Squeak»). It arrived alone, and you do wish they would bring out everyone’s food together… This was a tasty and satisfying dish. The moist but spiced egg was perfectly done to bind the whole thing together. The veggies were almost crunchy and the flavor was great.
After a bit of difficulty ordering it, I got some spicy chilli mix on the side. Shocking to me that they couldn’t procure a bit of spicy mango pickle. Bad, bad, bad kitchen. The taste was good enough where it honestly didn’t require further relish, but I’m a hopeless addict of spice and I like a little something to piqué the taste of a dish (I’m bad bad bad).
The dosa arrived later. She had ordered slightly aspirationally, because of the surviving South Indian weakness for the crisp, paper thin Indian dosa, inspite of the menu warning that it was more limp and cloth-​y than the Indian variety. The accompanying coconut chutney came in– what was slightly bigger than – a thimble. The sambar (a lentil stew with vegetables) was a joke. It was thinly flavored grey water with large chunky vegetables that had not been cooked properly. Nary a lentil to be seen. Now I have my bad cooking days. But I would never think to set something like that down in front of a guest. Ever. She gamely chowed down the dosa scraping every last morsel of the little spot of coconut chutney. The Sambar was inedible.
The waiter totally spaced on my drink order (Lankan ginger beer). I would like to tell you it was interesting, but I never got the chance to try it. We don’t mean to be rude, but we would never go back here given a choice.
My recommendation to others who crave South Asian and Sri Lankan food would be to (1) stick to the menu items such as Kotthu, Lamprais, and String Hoppers and Devil curries – the tried and tested Lankan classics (2) BYOB (bring your own chilled white or beer to accompany this food) and make a nicer meal out of it.

This place rocks on the food!
Owners Raj and Danny have nailed some excellent Sri Lankan fare in this little neighborhood gem right in front of politics and prose.
We ordered the pork lampri, which arrived in a banana leaf. The contents included yellow rice, an egg, roasted pork, cashews, a falafel, and aromatic herbs and spices. Divine.
The dosa with its tasty lentil curry was equally delicious. Sri Lankan dosa is different from Indian dosa and was a pleasant experience.
For dessert, we had the watalappam, the most popular sweet if Sri Lanka made with coconut, milk, clove, and cardomom.
Service was perfectly fine. Danny told me that the first few months after opening, they were overwhelmed by the number of guests and acknowledge being too slow. They have corrected that problem. This is why there are some low ratings but this problem seems to be resolved.
The Décor is pretty basic, even Spartan. Not exactly a romantic setting. But the food is fantastic and you get what you pay for in that department. They do not yet (as of this writing) have a liquor license.
We will definitely return.

Pleasantly surprised to find a Sri Lankan place so close to home! Went here for lunch on a Saturday. I got the fish khottu (I forgot the name– but the one with roti and egg scrambled) and the husband got hoppers with pork curry. Food wise everything tasted good and was on the spicier side– pepper based. But –1 star for the horribly slow service. A couple times our server was chatting at the cash register vs either taking our order or getting our check. I will come back but maybe go pick up food vs sitting here to count every second.

I write with some pause (reasons below), but I did enjoy Banana Leaf. Sri Lankan cuisine is surprisingly distinct from even the numerous South Indian restaurants I’ve visited.
The strong hopper kottu I ordered was quite filling and robustly flavored. It’s a sort of stir fried mishmash of bits of rice noodles, basic vegetables, what looked like egg, and quite a bit of seasoning. It ends up being like a fancy (and probably less healthy) fried rice. But it sure did taste good. I also sampled their vadai, the falafel-​like preparation that far too few restaurants in this area have. Their version was not donut shaped, as they often are, but did carry a nice kick. I also indulged in an imported ginger beer, which was quite good as ginger beers go; nice balance of sweetness and kick. My dining partner’s roti was a nice accompaniment.
It’s also a nice place to eat. A relatively isolated stretch of shops farther out than people usually go. The inside has small skylights and a Sri Lankan tourism video on repeat. Their menu offers some explanations, but still holds a few too many mysteries for my liking; after all, most of us haven’t had Sri Lankan before.
I went ahead and gave them four stars, but I was a little bit taken aback by (in concert) the prevalence of egg and fried things. Indian stuff is often fried, but egg is quite rare, whereas here, most of their dishes had it mixed in or came with one egg roti (which I imagine you could replace with a plain one). They did offer a dosa which might be a little lighter and presumably vegan. Myself, I rarely eat eggs, but I got succored into whatever fragments of such were in my dish. I try not to penalize restaurants for representing their native cuisine, and at least from what I read, that’s what they’re doing, but bear in mind the limitations of the menu. All that said, I’d go again (and maybe try a dosa next time).

First off: free delivery using GrubHub — one of the few places to offer delivery at no charge.
But this place earned 5 stars with the lamb lampri alone — it’s a dish of cooked cashews, pickled onions, sautéed vegetables, rice and amazingly seasoned lamb all packaged in a banana leaf. Who knew it would be soooo delicious?
Also ordered the appetizer sampler and it was ok. The Biryani was good, but not as delightfully flavorful as the lampri.

3.50 stars. This Chevy Chase outpost of a Chelsea Sri Lankan restaurant serves classic dishes including lamprais, string hoppers, and an assortment of fiery curries for those who tend to like spicy dishes. They operate in a clean atmosphere for what otherwise classifies as a dive. Banana Leaf DC is a new restaurant so understand that it’s entirely possible that there will be an enormous wait time for your food to arrive (ours took about 30 minutes).
I ordered the lamb lamprai as I didn’t see a frikadeller (meatball) option. What is a lamprai? Well, they describe it quite well on the menu, but essentially expect a curried meat of your choice with buttered rice, eggplant curry, cashew curry, onion curry, egg, and a cutlet all wrapped up in a banana leaf. I suggest mashing all the ingredients and eating them together to get the best result, but I’m sure some diners will enjoy eating each element on its own accord. I also tried the black pork curry, and the accompanying dishes were quite similar to what I found within my banana leaf. I favor the lamb curry to the pork curry, but they are both solid choices.
Prices are slightly higher than their Chelsea outpost. Lamprais run about $ 14 – 18, an order of fish roti is $ 7, and the aforementioned Black Pork Curry tallies $ 16. They price their dosas at $ 12 which is pretty steep considering many Indian restaurants provide them complimentary to their buffets.
I’d really like to see how this place operates for buffet (not sure that is available yet), but right now, it’s a solid Sri Lankan dinner in Chevy Chase if you have the time.

Prior to going to Banana Leaf, I’d only had Sri Lankan food once and it was on a visit to the Ambassador of Sri Lanka’s residence for an event a few years ago. I love Indian food so I was excited when I learned they would be opening in my neighborhood.
We went on a Sunday evening around 8:30 p.m. The place is very no frills. The walls are a bright green and they are random prints hanging throughout. We sat down at a table and the first thing I noticed was there was a piece of long grain rice on the table cloth and a purple ring, likely from a glass of red wine from a previous diner. Someone came over to bring a glass a water and it had lipstick on it. That is one of my biggest pet peeves. She apologized profusely, but I decided to just drink the bottle of water I had in my bag.
So anywho, our waiter comes over and asks us if we’re ready to order. He suggested a roti dish, we chose the beef option and asked for it without eggs. We also ordered the Devilled Shrimp, a stew that consisted of tomatoes, peppers and onions in a sweet and spicy sauce.
Despite, there only being two other tables it took about 20 – 25 minutes for our food to arrive. Fortunately, everything was tasty. I was disappointed that the roti dish still had eggs in it. It wasn’t spicy at all and it was warm, not hot. Also, I asked for my dish to be medium spicy but it was flaming hot. Clearly, I was a glutton for punishment because even though it was super hot, it was delicious and I ate every last bite.
After we finished, we sat there for nearly 30 minutes talking and waiting for someone to come clear the table. When that never happened, I got up and found our waiter and the other 3 people working, sitting down around the corner chatting.
The service definitely left something to be desired but the food was excellent. We’ll likely go back, but we’ll just make sure to order it to go.