The Banana Leaf Restaurant

We live a short five-minute walk from Little India in Singapore.  It’s a wonderful melting pot of sights, smells and sounds, all of which intensify on Sundays when people pour into the streets en masse, and pedestrians rule the roads. 

Colourful buildings everywhere - this one used to be a sweet shop

The sweet sweet smell of flowers

Road-side vegetable stalls

Sander’s cousin is visiting from Holland and as she’d never had Indian food before, it seemed a ripe opportunity to introduce her.  We spent an hour wandering the streets, walking up a bit of an appetite, and then dropped into the Banana Leaf restaurant.   We started a bit of a tradition when we first arrived here of taking visitors to the Banana Leaf for dinner and getting a snap of them eating with their fingers – the photos (not always very flattering, but fun none-the-less) are pegged above our desk in the office.  A fun reminder of our visitors over the past year.

The Banana Leaf has always been pretty touristy, but this time I noticed a few changes, and not for the better.  One of the things I love about the Banana Leaf is that you literally eat off banana leaves.  This time we were surprised to see green rectangular plates on all the tables, lined with a banana leaf.  We promptly removed ours, stacking them neatly to one side, which was noticed with clear amusement by one of the waiters.  He handed us a comments card and told us to leave a note to the managers – apparently we were not the only ones who preferred the previous arrangement.

The full complement

Palak paneer, channa masala and garlic naan

Post-meal herbal breath freshener

Despite this small (but significant to me) change, the meal was still the delicious, generously-proportioned experience I remember.  I only ever seem to leave the Banana Leaf on the point of a food coma, stuffed to the brim with palak paneer, channa masala, chicken tikka and briyani rice.  And try as I might, I still haven’t mastered eating tidily with my fingers.  Something to work on I suppose.