Fodor's Expert Review Bananas
Peripatetic English owner Gillian Smith has held jobs with Disney and Relais & Châteaux, and everything about Bananas borrows from her wildly diverse experiences. Even the setting is delightfully deceptive: the classic stone, brick, and wood plantation great house nestled amid extravagant gardens was painstakingly built by Gillian herself in 2006. Her fun, shabby-chic sensibility informs every aspect of the restaurant and adjacent art gallery in a faux chattel house. The colonial look (pith helmets, steamer trunks, beamed ceiling, chandeliers dangling from a corrugated tin roof) contrasts with Turkish kilims and Moroccan lamps. The food is equally eclectic and globe-trotting, running from bourbon-glazed guava ribs to baked gnocchi. Despite the improvisational ambience, there's no monkeying around with quality at Bananas.