Banana Leaf

Banana Leaf is a very popular restaurant at Milpitas. It specializes in Malaysian cuisine such as the famous Roti for example. We loved the Malaysian hawker food when we visited Orlando last time, thus we really wanted to try Malaysian food again whenever we have the chance.

We got to Banana Leaf at 5PM, just when the restaurant has just opened. The restaurant was quite big and had open kitchen concept. The menu was on the huge QR code placed at the top of the table. We didn't see any physical menus.

We ordered Roti Prata, Red Beef Curry, Banana Leaf Rice, and Hainan Chicken Rice. The Roti came very quickly. This is something that we have been craving for. The Roti came with the curry dipping sauce, however, we found that the Roti was not hot and was too crispy and breaking apart.

The Red Beef Curry was quite good. We loved the curry taste. The Red Beef Curry also had many different other ingredients in the curry such as tofu. It was full of surprise. The Hainan Chicken rice was amazing too. The chicken meat was very tender and the sauce was sweet and savory at the same time. Banana Leaf Rice came with coconut flavored rice and rendang chicken. The rendang chicken was very flavorful, just as much flavor as curry.

We really loved the food at Banana Leaf and wish we had chance to try more items on its menu. The only let down was the Roti and hope it would be better next time and served warm in the future.
 

Sifu Wong Kitchen

 

Sifu Wong Kitchen is a Cantonese restaurant located in Sunnyvale. It serves Cantonese Dim Dum dishes. It has a wide variety of Dim Sum dishes with 4 different prices tags for each individual dish. Other than Dim Dum dish, people can also order larger portion of food from the kitchen such as fried rice and noodle.

We got there around 11AM when the restaurant just opened. As we sat down the table, we first ordered the tea from the 4 different tea options. At Sifu Wong Kitchen, they don't push Dim Sum carts around for people to pick the dish. Instead, we were given a menu selection sheet to select what we want to order. We ordered 10 dishes in total including pork rib, pineapple bun, Sui Mai, shrimp dumpling, rice roll, and others.

All these food were made fresh and we did wait for some time to get the food served to our table. The food tasted very fresh. One of the biggest surprise to us was the pineapple bun. Inside the pineapple bun, it was purple yam instead of custard. We have never seen this before.

The black salty egg yolk bun was really good too. The bun was in black color with a tad of gold color tapped at the top of the bun. The bun may be made with black sesame. As we took a bite, the yolk was so hot and dripping out.

The rice roll was an amazing addition as well. The rice roll was freshly made and it was so hot. The roll was so soft. Then it was mixed with the sweet soy sauce, the texture and the taste was just right. This really shows how important it is to have freshly made food.

Overall, we really enjoyed the food at Sifu Wong Kitchen. We have not had such authentic Dim Sum food for a while. Sifu Wong Kitchen has really shown us how Dim Sum Should be made. We would definitely come back here again if we have the chance in the future.

Duan Chun Zhen

 

Duan Chun Zhen is a restaurant that specializes in Taiwanese Beef Noodle. Duan Chun Zhen is the name of the founder of the restaurant and already has several restaurants in Taiwan. It also has 2 restaurants in US and both of them are in California. We went to the one at Cupertino, right beside Apple's campus.

As we walk into the restaurant, the interior decoration caught our eyes. It was bright and has a clean feel to it. Every table already has menus and utensils places correctly on the table. A clear glass water bottle was also placed on the table.

The menu has a lot more items than just beef noodle. There were various appetizers and also rice dish. There were also different type of noodles that people can choose from. These 3 types of noodles are thin, thick, and hand made noodles.We ordered the recommended beef noodle with tenderloin with hand made noodle. On top of that, we also got a place of braised dish platter.

The braised dish platter was put in a black plastic container, which was quite cheap. The amount of food in the braised dish platter includes bean curd, tempura, seaweed, and beef. Each came with about 6 small pieces, which was very little. We were definitely not impressed by this.

The beef noodle was placed in a nice looking custom made bow with Duan Chun Zheng printed on it. At the first glance, we didn't even see any noodle since it was under the soup. As we dig in, the amount of noodle in the bowl was disappointingly little. The soup, however, was tasty. Unlike the usually Taiwanese beef noodle, this one has Sichuan pepper corn in it which gives some spicy kick in it.

Overall, we were disappointed with Duan Chun Zhen because it actually had good reviews. The food taste was not the best and the amount of food given was quite little. The cost was high for the amount of food given. We would not recommend to go to Duan Chun Zhen if beef noodle soup is what people are looking for.

Crepe Cafe

 

Crepe Cafe is a bakery snack restaurant located at Pier 39 in San Francisco. As its name suggests, it specializes in Fresh Crepes and offers variety of crepe flavors. The flavors include both sweet and savory options. There are many seafood restaurants at Pier 39, but Crepe Cafe is the only place that sells crepes. Thus it has attracted many customers who were visiting Pier 39.

When we got there around 12PM, there wasn't a line yet since most people were having lunch at this time. The wall at the side of the restaurant were clear glass where people can see the making of the crepe directly. Many people stood by the wall and watch. We actually saw an interesting crepe with cheese, pineapple, and ham in there. This was just like Hawaiian flavored pizza.

We then ordered a nutella banana crepe. This is definitely a classic and we would love to try it. The crepe was not cheap however. It cost $13 for the crepe. After we made the payment, we just went to the side of the glass and watched our crepe getting made.

The crepe was made rather quickly and it was done within 5 minutes. The crepe was put on a paper plate, then sugar powder was poured on top of the crepe and whip cream was added on the side.

The crepe was crisp and soft at the same time. It was done perfectly. We used knife and fork to cut the crepe into small pieces, and we really loved it. The whip cream was very fresh as well. We could really enjoy the sweetness of the ingredients and the tenderness of the crepe.

Crepe Cafe is definitely a great place to go for dessert after a big seafood lunch. The only downside was that the cost was a little high, but the cost is usually high at tourist area.