Basil Thai Cooking - restaurant review

We'd seen the front of the restaurant a few times since it's in the same strip mall complex as one of our favorite sushi places, but it wasn't a very big storefront and we could tell it was a restaurant but weren't sure what kind since the only sign on the restaurant said "BASIL". Luckily, a friend ventured in and had a great experience, which I read about on her blog, so I had decided to try it sometime. Sometime ended up being about a month ago when the husband and I joined said friend and another friend there for dinner.

This past weekend, the husband and I decided to venture back on our own.

The menu is fairly extensive, and since I'm not as familiar with Thai food as I am some other Asian cuisines, I pretty much have to read all the descriptions to figure out what everything is, and there are so many good-sounding things on the menu that it's hard to narrow down what you actually want to order. The husband and I order family-style, so at least that means we can choose a few different things.

I have been a HUGE fan of tom yum gai ever since I tried it for the first time because another friend would mention it a lot. I think I most enjoy the lemon grass flavoring but also the mixture of spicy and other flavors. Like Chinese hot and sour soup, tom yum gai can be made with any number of variations in various restaurants.

I ordered an individual bowl of the tom yum gai, which the husband and I shared. I did enjoy the flavoring of the soup, but it wasn't quite as lemony or spicy as I normally prefer, but I still liked it enough that I would order it again. They actually have a seafood version of the tom yum that I think I'll try next time.

The husband and I also ordered an appetizer of fried wontons. We were surprised, though, that they weren't the kind we're used to seeing in Chinese restaurants. Go figure - they're different because it's a Thai restaurant! Yeah, I know, did I mention I'm still learning Thai food? The menu says that there is ground meat inside (pork, I think, but I can't remember for sure - it was either pork or beef), but there's actually just a tiny bit of meat inside. It mostly looks like a won ton wrapper square folded in half to form a triangle and deep fried. It's served accompanied by a sweet sauce that I've had before with egg rolls. The won tons were really crunchy and quite good, and I'd actually order it again, but next time, I'll know it's basically like having a meatless appetizer, though of course, it wouldn't work for actual vegetarians.

For our entrees, we ordered a rice noodle dish which I don't remember the name of, but it was spicy and had an assortment of meats, including seafood, and we also ordered a meat dish (chicken, but you can have it as a beef dish as well) cooked with broccoli and garlic. I really enjoyed the noodle dish (I *really* like rice noodles, whether stir fried or in noodle soup - they just have a really great texture to them) because it was just so flavorful. The meat dish was also really good, with specks of cooked garlic that you could actually see - a good thing for two garlic fans.

We did have an order of rice with our meal as well, but we ended up eating very little of it, so in the future, we might just skip the rice altogether, especially if we're getting a noodle dish. We actually ate so little of it that we were told we'd only be charged for a partial order.

On our previous visit, we had ordered the pad thai - a staple of Thai cooking of course - and it was really good. We also had a beef dish called something like Crying Tiger which I remember really liking. We also had tastes of the dishes that our friends had ordered, but I have no memory of what they were - I just remember thinking they were really good.

I think what I need to do is to get a paper version of the menu that I can keep and then just check off the items I've tried after each visit until I eventually make my way through the entire menu.

The restaurant is fairly small, with maybe less than a dozen small tables. They also have this really long wavy table, kinda like a new-wave bar area. I'm not sure it would be conducive to having conversation with more than one other person, and my main issue would be that the seating is just round stools, with no backing, which I generally find to be very painful.

The restaurant is family run, with the dad as the chef, mom as a hostess/server and their teenage son as the main server. They are all very nice and very helpful if you have questions about menu items. They were also very attentive about taking away empty plates and refilling our water glasses.

One other thing is that with your check, you get coffee candy that I *really* like. I've decided that once they get to know me a little better, I'm going to actually work up the nerve to ask if it's available in stores, although I have never been in a Thai market, so I'd have to find one. I thought about asking this time, but I was worried that she'd just give me a handful, which I would appreciate but which isn't what I want - I want to be able to buy a bag of the stuff!


At the end of our meal, the hostess/server/mom asked if we'd been to the restaurant before as she said we looked familiar, and we said we'd been once before, with a friend who's been there multiple times. After some explanation, she knew who we were talking about, so Sher, you got credit for a return visit from people who you originally brought to the restaurant.


With so many yummy things on the menu and the relatively small restaurant, the husband and I joked about how much it would cost to just rent out the whole place. If we decide to throw a Thai party, anyone wanna come?




Basil Thai Cooking
411 East Huntington Drive
Arcadia, CA 91006
(626) 447-8845