The Banana Leaf chain is spreading Thai cuisine throughout China with its diverse fruit dishes that will have you coming back for more. You can find cold fruit salad or ice cream dishes at any western-style cake stores, but hot dishes made of real fruit are hard to find.

When entering Banana Leaf, visions of a tropical resort town in Thailand abound. Plastic coconuts, bananas, papaya, pineapple and mangoes hang from tropical-looking trees.

Fried Crab in Mango Butter and Spicy Curry is the house specialty. The dish arrives as a whole crab drenched in a thick, buttery curry that is unusually mixed with fresh mango and juice and is not as spicy as you might expect. The crabmeat is difficult to get to as it has not been broken into pieces and there are no utensils. It can get a little messy when everything is drenched in curry.

The Snow Clam Papaya Soup is a perfect blend of sweet and salty. The dish looks beautiful, served in a hollowed-out half-section of papaya with clams floating on the surface. Coconut, papaya, red Chinese dates and snow clam are stewed for three hours with shell bones, which leads to a creamy but salty taste. This dish is also believed to improve muscle structure and smoother skin, at least according to the waiter.

An Indian chef prepares Thai pancakes by rolling the prepared dough by hand until it is as thin as a piece of paper. He then adds some butter and other ingredients, and fries it over a gentle heat until it turns golden and gives off a tempting aroma. The pineapple and coconut pancake are crisp but chewy, with a nice smell of butter filling the air.

Address: No4 Gongti Bei Lu, Chaoyang
Opening hour: 11am-9pm
Tel: 010-6506 3399
Cost: 80 yuan per person

                                                                  [Source: Beijing Today]