Banana leaf plates

At Banana Leaf Curry House, a restaurant that serves Asian food, the plates are real banana leaves on brown paper place mats. Even the chairs look like they're woven banana leaves. Eating with your fingers here is perfectly acceptable (especially if you're having roti with curry dip), though most use the spoon and fork provided. Banana Leaf's menu is a mixture of Indian, Thai, Indonesian, Malaysian, Singaporean and Chinese cuisine. Needless to say, most of the dishes are spicy. Yummy, too!

Banana leaf lights

In keeping with its theme, even the lighting fixtures of the Asian restaurant Banana Leaf Curry House are shaped like banana leaves. I think that they would have looked better if they were painted green, though, rather than white.

Fountain of youth

Today all over Metro Manila, malls competed for their share of consumer pesos by hosting Easter programs and games for children. For such-and-such amount spent in the mall, children can participate in arts and crafts, get their face painted, join games and go Easter egg hunting 'for free.' We have turned into such a mall culture, it's scary. The kids seemed to have a lot of fun though, and I liked The Podium mall's centerpiece in the game area: a fountain filled with brightly colored plastic Easter eggs. We were at The Podium to have lunch with my husband's family at Banana Leaf Curry House because today also happens to be my mother-in-law's birthday.

Happy Easter, everyone!