Deep Fried Bananas? (Tropika (Robson))

Located in the heart of downtown Vancouver on Robson street, this restaurant is both convenient and a good place to go for a date. Although I wasn't here for a date, I was here for a group outing/meeting. It was 8PM on a Saturday night and we made a reservation for 10 people on last minute noticed and I was surprised that there was room. We made the reservation about half an hour before we arrived too.
   When it comes to parking, you will need to park on the street. If the time was earlier, I'd imagine that finding a place to park would be a difficult thing. But because the hours were late, we were able to find a spot. So if you are planning to come here, I recommend taking public transit. It might sound unclassy if you are bringing a date here to go by public transit... but hey, it could be a new sustainability trend to date by transit ;).
   After we finished parking, we entered the restaurant. Because the restaurant itself was upstairs, we had to walk up a flight of stairs. The appearance from the front counter reminds me a Chinese restaurant because they had one of those tanks that have crabs inside of them. We were directed to our seats. I'll admit, because we had 10 people in our party,the table space felt abit cramp. The amount of seats inside the restaurant is adequate, but to fit more seats in the restaurant, I noticed that alot of the seats are crammed in together.
   At the beginning, when we were about to order, everyone had a hard time deciding what to get. So eventually we came to the conclusion of getting two appetizers, a few entrees and a dessert per person. We ordered the Malaysian pastry and skewers. The skewers were good but it was slightly burnt. You could taste the juicy flavour inside the chicken, while the pastry was good but I would recommend eating it as soon as it comes (or else risk it becoming abit mushy if you leave it out for too long).
When we were finished with our appetizers, the fried rice came. Also, we ordered barbecue chicken. I would say the fried rice wasn't anything too special but there was a dish of fried rice that came that was pretty special. I forgot what the name was called, but it looked slightly dark purple and the rice seemed like the long grain Thai rice. The special thing about it was that it was spicy, but it wasn't the regular spicy taste where you taste the spice right away. It's one of those where the spice slowly work its way into your palate.

What was really cool was the dessert. I saw on the menu that they had deep fried bananas. It's written on the menu as something in Malaysian but they have (deep fried bananas) in parentheses. At first I thought, "eww that sounds gross". But being an adventurous person, my curiosity took the better side of me and I decided to give it a try. I had to tell myself to not think about the calories too much because anything deep fried is guaranteed to come packed with calories. Not to mention, the dish also came with a ball of ice cream and two balls of whipped cream. This does sound like a heart attack waiting to happen.
When the dish came, I decided to split it with my friends at the table. I gave them the whipped cream and ice cream and one of the bananas while I took the other. When I took a bite into the banana, I was surprised. It didn't have the squishy banana taste to it. Being warm and slightly crispy, the texture on the inside sort of taste like marshmallows, yet the sweet taste is a natural sweet and not the sugary taste that you get with marshmallows. If we ignored the calorie count, I would say the deep fried bananas are pretty good. That said, the dish was about $6, so it is abit on the expensive side. Other than that, I would say Tropika is a pretty decent place to have dinner.

Sala Thai (Burrard, Downtown Vancouver)

This place is located on Burrard Street and just across the street from the Scotiabank Theatre. From the outside, it has a classy feel to it with the mahogany coloured wooden frames. When we walked in, I can immediately smell the flower smell (not sure what that flower is called, it must be some sort of Thai flower). My first impression was that the place is very clean, but there's a hint of Westernization in the Thai (like the elephant on the wall is wearing a Santa hat...). I'm not saying that I don't like it, but it was interesting to see the fusion.
 When we were seated down, we got the menu. The menu composed of a few sections, from a vegetarian section to a curry section to a bunch of other entrees. It seemed like coconut and bamboo is on all of the menu options. When the waitress came, we asked her if the entrees included rice, but she said that the rice isn't included with any of the entrees. I thought it was standard to include rice, but I guess not. The waitress was very knowledgeable about the menu though, she had the menu memorized because when we asked her about the item, she just told us the thing on the menu without even looking at the menu.

  We ordered the curry (it's not called curry, but it's number 23 on the menu item) and jasmine brown rice. The curry was about $12.95 and the rice was around $3.00. The price for a bowl of rice (it wasn't even that big) is abit expensive. The taste was fair, and the portion of the curry was pretty fair I say too but it was abit on the small side. My friend and I shared one curry, but the curry would be better for just one person because we were still hungry after.
   The taste of the curry was pretty good, but abit on the greasy side because of the coconut oil. But the chicken was lean and the smell is really aromatic and good.Alsom I really like the milky texture of it. The portion was fair but could have been abit more for the price or perhaps included rice.
    In general, I would recommend this place for anyone who like to give Thai food a try, and it would be a sweet place to bring your date or even just an outing with friends.