Three Generations.
Two Cuisines.
One Family.

Banana Leaf Thai is family-owned and has served authentic Thai cuisine in North Dallas since 2000. The Jong family's restaurant roots in Dallas reach back to the 1960s, beginning with Ming Garden - six decades of hospitality behind every dish we serve today. Banana Leaf by the Numbers

How a Dallas Thai Restaurant Started in a Chinese Kitchen

Most Thai restaurants in Dallas started with a cookbook. Ours started with a wedding.

The Jong family came to Dallas in the 1960s and opened two Chinese restaurants that would feed three generations of North Texans: Ming Garden and Yee's Chinese Restaurant. For decades, those names meant lazy Sunday lunches, anniversary dinners, school-night takeout. If you grew up in North Dallas before 2000, there's a good chance one of those menus is still folded in your memory somewhere.

Then, in the late 1990s, the family grew. Steve Jong's brother-in-law and his wife — both classically trained Thai cooks from Chiang Mai, the culinary capital of Northern Thailand — joined the family business. They didn't bring a strategy deck. They brought recipes their mother taught them, the kind passed across kitchen tables in Chiang Mai for generations: pad krapow with fresh holy basil; tom yum built on lemongrass, galangal, and lime that had to be picked the morning of; curries pounded by hand in stone mortars.

In 2000, those two cooking traditions — Cantonese-rooted Chinese-American and Northern Thai — became one restaurant. Banana Leaf Thai opened in Preston Trail Plaza on Preston Road, where it has remained for over 25 years on the same corner.

1. 🥢
   1965
   Ming Garden & Yee's open in Dallas
   The Jong family establishes itself in the Dallas dining scene with two beloved Chinese restaurants. For the next four decades, they become quiet North Dallas staples — the kind of family restaurants people drove across town for.
2. 💍
   Late 1990s
   A wedding brings Chiang Mai to Preston Road
   Steve Jong's brother-in-law and his wife, both classically trained Thai cooks from Chiang Mai, join the family. With them comes a Northern Thai culinary tradition that traces back generations — and a vision for something Dallas has never seen before.
3. 🌿
   2000
   Banana Leaf Thai opens its doors
   Steve and Kat Jong launch Banana Leaf Thai in Preston Trail Plaza. The menu fuses Thai-from-Chiang-Mai authenticity with the Jongs' Chinese heritage — Pad Thai and Panang Curry sit alongside Cajun Fried Rice (a Steve Jong signature) and Cantonese-leaning crossover dishes.
4. 🏆
   2002 – 2007
   Three "Best Thai" awards in five years
   Dallas Observer names Banana Leaf Thai "Best Thai Restaurant" in 2002 and again in 2003. City's Best follows in 2007 with "Dallas's Best Thai Restaurant." Word spreads from North Dallas to Plano, Addison, Richardson, and Carrollton.
5. 👨‍🍳
   Today
   The next generation takes the kitchen
   Kameron Jong, the next generation, leads the restaurant forward — same recipes, same Preston Road corner, same family. With over 2154 Google reviews and a 4.7-star rating, Banana Leaf Thai has become one of the longest-running Thai restaurants in Dallas-Fort Worth, trusted by guests who have been coming for 25 years and by corporate caterers like AT&T, Cisco, Baylor Scott & White, and UT Dallas.

Meet the Jong Family

A restaurant is only as good as the people in the kitchen. Here are the names behind the food:

Awards & Recognition

The food has earned the Jong family some attention over the years. We don't talk about it much in the dining room — but here's the wall, since you asked:

Two Cuisines, One Kitchen

Most Thai restaurants in Dallas serve one cuisine. We serve two — because we cooked Chinese food first, and we've never left it behind. The menu reflects both sides of the family.

That's why our menu has dishes you won't find at other Thai restaurants — and why a lot of our regulars are former Ming Garden and Yee's customers who followed the family across the years. If you've ever wondered what the difference is between Thai and Chinese fried rice, we wrote a whole guide.

Why Our Food Tastes Different

People ask us this constantly. The honest answer: nothing about how we cook is unusual — it's just done the way Thai grandmothers cook. The difference is that most Thai restaurants in America have to cut corners to compete. We don't, because we never figured out how.

Specifically:

• 🌿 Curry pastes are made in-house. Most Thai restaurants buy curry paste from a wholesaler. Ours is pounded by hand from fresh ingredients — galangal, lemongrass, kaffir lime, dried chilies — the way they do it in Chiang Mai.
• 🌿 The fish sauce matters. We use specific Thai fish sauce brands the family has used for decades. It changes the entire flavor of a stir-fry.
• 🌿 Holy basil isn't optional. Pad krapow uses Thai holy basil (krapow), not the Italian sweet basil most restaurants substitute. We grow ours.
• 🌿 Spice is calibrated honestly. When you order a Thai-3, you get a Thai-3. We don't dial it down for Western palates. Our full spice guide is here.
• 🌿 Gluten-free isn't an afterthought. Because most authentic Thai cooking already uses rice and rice noodles instead of wheat, we've built one of Dallas's most extensive gluten-free Thai menus.

The Companies Who Hire Us to Feed Their Teams

Sixty years of family hospitality plus twenty-five years of running a Thai kitchen has earned us some trusted catering relationships. When DFW's biggest employers want Thai food for their offices, this is who they call:

If you'd like to know more about our Thai catering in Dallas, Plano, Frisco, Addison, and beyond, or see our full DFW catering clients page, we'd love to feed your team next.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Jong Family & Banana Leaf Thai