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| - I DO NOT understand why this place gets such good reviews. First, I *live* down the street from Smiling Banana Leaf, so I've had the dubious pleasure of going there more than once. Each time, I go and hope it'll be better--but it never is.
First: the chicken is pre-cooked before it's inserted into whatever curry you order. WHY hasn't anyone else realized this? It's always gummy, and sometimes it's downright odd-tasting. In fact, if you look through the kitchen doorway on the way in, you can SEE the big bin of pre-cooked chicken.
That's IF you manage to find the chicken in your selected curry at all. Last time I was there, I ordered the mussaman curry. As some other reviewer pointed out, it had crinkle-cut carrots in it. I ordered the extra chicken. The extra chicken tasted odd, but at least it was on the plate. The time before that, I got the green curry and it came with possibly eight pieces of thin chicken bits.
Another time, I ordered the pad thai. "Pad thai," I thought, "hard to f**k that up." It came in a nondescript brown sauce, no vegetables, very little tofu, and black bits stuck to the egg in the noodles.
The Pad See Ew is OK if you're hungry, but feels somewhat one-dimensional.
And then there's the issue of their fried dumplings. Who sticks these things in a deep fryer? The last time I had them, they were unpleasantly crispy and overly oily.
Anyway, I'm posting this because I can't for the life of me understand why this place is rated so highly. It's mediocre at best. Seriously.
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