Picture of Banana Tree, SW11 1HN

Historical version 3 of Banana Tree, SW11 1HN (view current version)

  • 020 7228 2828
  • 75-79 Battersea Rise, SW11 1HN (streetmap) (osm) (gmap) (bingmap) (streetview)
  • noon-3pm, 6pm-11pm Mon-Fri; noon-11pm Sat-Sun

A popular pan-Asian restaurant, mostly Malaysian and Thai dishes, on Battersea Rise, near Clapham Junction Station.

On a Tuesday evening just before 7:30pm two of us had a short wait for a seat, but the queue was getting quite long within the next half hour. The seating arrangement is familiar to many budget canteen-style eateries: long tables where people are fitted in as necessary. Service is brisk and food comes fairly quickly.

Ewan and Jo had some spicy corn fritter things (£3) as a starter, which were fried and very tasty, with some dipping sauce, easy to eat. Mostly people had bowls of the prawn crackers, though being vegetarians we were in the minority (but they looked quite substantial).

The house special is the Banana Leaf Meal (£8.80) for which you can choose from any of the mains except the noodles, and it is served with rice, a couple of the corn fritters, some prawn crackers, and a salad (with a £1 surcharge for prawn-based main courses, being a little more expensive). Individually mains are around £5.50-£7. I chose a mock duck stir fry with the Nyonya bean sauce with cashews (a thick sticky sauce), which was perfectly good. Jo's noodles (again with mock duck, around £6) were extremely tasty.

Vegetarians should beware of the rather idiosyncratic labelling on the menu. Dishes marked as "V" are mostly vegetarian but may have egg or fish sauce in them (just which, is usually indicated in the description of the dish). Dishes marked as "V*" are actually vegetarian, and one of those indicates a vegan option is available (the Thai basil & oyster sauce).

The total bill including a single glass of wine was around £25, including the gratuity (10% is added to the bill and is marked as optional), so fairly good value for the area.

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Last visited by Ewan and Jo, 20 May 2008. Opening hours taken from Time Out website, May 2008.
OS X co-ord: 527494 OS Y co-ord: 175113 (Latitude: 51.460127 Longitude: -0.164603)
This is version 3 (as of 2008-05-21 23:09:37). View current version. List all versions.