Great food, but what's with the service?
Banana Leaf is a specialty restaurant serving South Indian cuisine, located prominently on the main road in Juhu. It is on the upper level of a shopping complex and the entrance from the side of the shops is small and cramped. Once inside, there is a large partitioned hall. Care has been taken to leave enough space between the tables. The tables, themselves, however, are pretty small which makes dining uncomfortable as one has to keep shifting the dishes to make space for new ones.
The menu is impressive with a variety of tiffin snacks, curries and rice preparations. We tried the thali so as to get a taste of all that they had to offer. The sumptuous thali starts with tangy piping hot rasam (served soup style). The thali itself comprises of starters (vadas and uttapam), 6 different curries/veggies, curd and sambar. This is to be relished with appam / neer dosa / chapati and a bowl of steamed rice / bissibelle bhat as per choice and washed down with spiced buttermilk. Payasam is served for dessert.
The rasam and the snacks were lip-smacking. A huge plus was that all the curries tasted different from each other and the avial was especially good. At Rs. 225 the thali is a good buy to taste a variety of South Indian dishes at one go. I would rate it better than the food available at some of the famous Matunga eateries (Some people might be offended by this but the fact remains – food at some of the famed Matunga places is home-style food, the food at Banana Leaf is a proper restaurant style display of the culinary variety of Southern India).
The quantity of food in a single thali is too much for one person to have. The servers did not warn us about the same. We ordered one thali per head and ended up wasting lots of food. Service was, overall, shoddy. Chutneys were not served with the thali – we had to ask for it. The spoons were cleared along with the rasam bowls and replaced only after asking twice. Water glasses were refilled only on request. We asked if just one of the payasams could be substituted for some other dessert only to be flatly refused (I agree that these kind of requests kind of defeat the purpose of fixed – course meals but then it was not so difficult a request). They served paan after the food which was dry and stale. There was nothing called ambiance – the place was chaotic and noisy and people were shouting – more like a college canteen. These can, however, be ignored for having the fabulous food.
A place with really good food, though they should give some options for dessert with the thali and maybe have version of it in a smaller portion size. But the pathetic service and ambiance just spoils it all. I would suggest going there for a lazy brunch or dinner and just for the food.
Rating: 4/5
Must have - the Thali
