Amy L.
Yelp
My husband and I visited The Banyan Tree to celebrate our anniversary while staying at The Ritz Carlton. It's a gorgeous restaurant, beautiful flowers and plants adorning the walls interesting light fixtures and a very open air feeling. The server was very friendly and attentive, he offered suggestions and was very helpful. We opted to come in an hour earlier than our reservation because it was our first night on the island and the time change was rough, they were able to accommodate us right away, which was very appreciated.
I ordered the Akala-Poni Martini, essentially a blueberry lemon drop, which was good. My husband got the Kilauea Mist cocktail, which was akin to a very refreshing cucumber jalapeño margarita- which we both thought was excellent. The drinks are slightly higher priced than ones at most spots in LA, but weren't terrible. We ordered the focaccia and it was very tasty. We decided to share a New York Steak as the steak options were all pretty hefty sized (we were told the tomahawk was 14 oz, etc) and it was cooked in their special charcoal Josper Oven that smokes and grills at the same time. This steak was probably one of the best that I've had. We ordered the chimichurri on the side, I tried it - it was good but absolutely unnecessary as the flavor of the meat was so excellent. We shared the Josper smoked Alii Mushrooms, which were excellent, I've never had this kind of mushroom before and they were large and seasoned well with tamari and mirin. We also shared the crispy brussel sprouts, they were very tasty at first with this 'compressed pineapple' playing off the salty soy based (I believe) sauce, however once the pineapple was gone I found them far too salty and a little too oily for my taste. But I am glad we got to try them.
The reason I gave 4 stars instead of 5 is two reasons, one is a very limited and disappointing dessert menu, they only have 3 options (none which looked good to me) and two, while seated inside there were about 15 enormous flies pestering us throughout the entire time we had our food. There was a side of the dining room that was not a solid wall, it was covered by a canvas roll down shade that they open when it's not sunset or possibly when it gets cooler out and wide open doorways to get the wonderful ocean breezes. Obviously it's not the restaurants fault that there were a ton of flies however we spent the whole time shooing flies away (as with everyone else in the restaurant) while trying to enjoy this $200+ meal, that was not enjoyable.