Banana Leaf Asian Cuisine — Restaurant in Hamilton

I’ve been a fan of this restaurant since we moved to Stoney Creek - ordering their food time and again with majorly positive experiences. However, my experience tonight was disappointing enough for me to never want to go back.

We placed an order with hot and sour soup, chili chicken, general zuo’s chicken and chicken udon noodles - our usual order. Upon going home, we saw that the chili chicken was in fact 90% vegetable stir-fry and 10% chicken which is pathetic because we ordered a chicken dish. In fact, while placing the order, the specifically asked him to ensure that there was chicken and not an overwhelming amount of veggies (of which the guy took note). The general zuo which is usually my favorite was so odd - the chicken had fish-like soft mushy consistency. We called up the place and told them about the order mishap, to which the front desk man said “come into the restaurant” and literally cut the phone on us while we were speaking. Upon making the drive over and taking the food in (which no customer should even have to do), the guy at the front desk was rude and told us the chef will talk to us. The chef approached us, opened the food and aggressively shoved his hands into the chicken and wagged the piece of chicken, with gravy splattering outside the dish. He responded by saying “This is chicken, I cooked it so I know there was chicken. You took it home so I don’t know if this is true”. Utterly disgusted and disappointed that someone would be so rude to their customers and mistreat food. Who disrespects food the way this man did? Does he even have the right to call himself a chef? I have literally never seen a chef be so aggressive and crass .. towards food. My only two cents would be that you need to teach your staff customer service and let them know that admitting mistakes is a part of growing.

UPDATE TO THE OWNER’S RESPONSE BELOW:

1. Firstly, I see your initial comment calling us “so greedy”. “Greedy customers” wouldn’t have called you up with constructive feedback, or given you your full serving of vegetables back. Or driven all the way to you to rectify your problem. (See attached picture for their initial comment)
2. We never once asked for our money back. You could have apologized for your lack of quality and we would have gladly let it go. We actually told you over the phone that we have already eaten about half the General Zuo’s but are not sure if it is chicken or fish because chicken is never soft. (We were 5 people having dinner, so if everyone takes one spoon, that’s enough for half of the dish to be finished) You still asked us to bring it in. As for the “chicken” chilli, attached is a picture of it looking as full as it was when we got it. So please don’t paint a false picture and mislead people about the fact that we ate the food and got a refund. God knows we were fully transparent and honest.
3. We absolutely have no desire to be a continued customer so let’s not hold false delusions. Please continue doing business with complete lack of etiquette. It is your continued ignorance and rudeness which speaks for itself. I truly have done my best to support small businesses including yours and will continue to do so. But I will not stand fingers being pointed for no reason. We paid for your services and deserved quality food and service, it was not free food over which you can bash us. Hope you can understand how hurtful it was to be received by rude employees and now a rude response, thus sharing this review is definitely not online bullying. Wish your small business the...

Very Nice people, but unfortunately after trying a handful of their chinese and thai dishes I found them to be full of bell peppers, bell peppers and more bell peppers... no exaggeration in comparison to everything else in the dishes I've had, there was three times more bell peppers than anything else, seems to be their go to filler, but if you love bell peppers this is your place!

I have now tried the lunch menu Pad Thai and asked them to hold the peppers, while it is a somewhat tasty dish at first, it is NOT Pad Thai, they are using rice noodles, but they are skinny, I have never had pad thai served with skinny noodles before (they are usually wider like fettucine is), there's mushrooms in this which I like, but this is the first Pad Thai that I've ever had with mushrooms in it, usually they have green beans or broccoli or bamboo shoots, bean sprouts or all of those and this only has shredded carrots that are 4mm thick but somehow not cooked through at all and then fully cooked mushrooms and two tiny broccoli florets the size of a nickel with skimpy pieces of chicken and the sauce is okay ish in the first couple bites but as you progress it is a ruiner, it is overly tangy and sweet and for me became off putting after a few minutes..and at that, it is the opposite of what Pad Thai sauce actually tastes like, personally I hate processed type stuff and the sauce is basically a ketchup base with szechuan-like seasoning and siracha (the siracha taste is only bc I ordered it medium hot) so this is definitely a COMPLETE PAD THAI FAIL, if I was in a blind taste test I would never guess that it was pad thai... I would likely guess szechuan noodles and cashew chicken with peanuts instead.... I was really craving pad thai big time so this is a hugely disappointing in that regard and I really like the people at Banana Leaf, they are soo nice,...

Jan 2019- We went back just recently, and were again pleased with the cuisine here. We started with the hot and sour soup which warmed us up nicely on a cold winter evening. We especially liked the General Zuo's Eggplant. We liked in not only for the crispy eggplant, but also because the dish was eggplant and only eggplant. Sometimes when you order an eggplant dish you get some eggplant but also onions, pepper and other vegetables. We got our money's worth of eggplant here. We also had the vegetable fried rice. The wait staff was very accommodating of what we might like in it. It was tasty and the vegetables were fresh. (don't appreciate when the vegetable fried rice that you get at some places is simply frozen vegetables in rice). We are definitely looking forward to returning. Original review from 2017, we were looking for a vegetarian restaurant with an Asian theme. Found Banana Leaf on Google. Called to see if they were open. Person answering was very polite and professional. We arrived and were seated in a small but nicely appointed dining room. The waiter suggested that we take the Dinner for 4. Around $80. He assured us that to do that vegetarian wouldn't be an issue. It included vegetarian spring rolls which were crisp and hot. Next came Hot and Sour soup - good taste. We could pick 5 items from the menu. The vegetarian section was quite varied. The first pick was the eggplant- It came deep fried in batter with a sweet and sour sauce. This was superb. We all like eggplant and this was the highlight. We also got vegetarian Pad Thai, a Paneer dish with vegetables garlic and ginger, a spicy bean dish and a Vegetarian delight. For the 4 of us there was more food than we could eat. We were well satisfied and pleased to have found this restaurant and are looking forward...