The best thing about Sweet Basil was that it was happy hour while I was there.
Sweet Basil, a restaurant on 284 Black Rock Turnpike serving Pan-Asian cuisine, has uninspired dishes that lack passion.
First off, I’m always uneasy about pan-anything restaurants.
I find that more often than not their inability to focus on one cuisine leads to a lack in quality in the food overall — a jack of all trades, master of none.
In this case, I think my hypothesis was confirmed.
Add that to an error in service, and that sums up my experience at Sweet Basil.
Seeing that the restaurant had fared well on Urbanspoon, a restaurant review website, I thought that I had found an easy place to cover for this week’s article.
Opening the menu, I was doubly excited by the fact that not only did they have Thai cuisine; but that it was happy hour and they served my second favorite Thai beer, Sing Ha (it just doesn’t compare to a nice cold Chang though).
Having lived in Thailand for a month, admittedly I have my biases when it comes to Thai food, however I don’t think that this review comes unfairly.
Accompanied, by my friend – had to throw that in because I don’t want you to think I drank alone – we decided to share orders of Tom Yam soup, a hot and sour Thai soup, Chicken Satay, Thai Fried Rice with Pork and Thai Style Duck.
And since the restaurant offered a customization in levels of spice, we ordered everything medium spicy, save the duck, which we ordered extra spicy. Why not, right?
Tom Yam soup is a mainstay in Thai cuisine, something that I love and order every time I see it on a menu.
With a broth made of lemongrass, lime, chili peppers and usually served with seafood, Tom Yam has a nice tangy flavor to it.
I highly recommend trying it someday, but just not here, the soup hardly had any hint of lemongrass or spice, and the mussels and calamari served in it were rubbery.
Next onto the Chicken Satay:, pretty simple dish, chicken roasted on a stick served with peanut sauce, hard to do well, but hard to mess up too.
That’s why I was surprised when I found that it had succeeded in the latter.
There was barely any chicken– the chicken that was there was dry, and it came with a small serving of what was blatantly canned pineapple. Now I’m starting to think that this place might be co-owned by Sodexo.
The appetizers happened to be a foreshadowing of what was to come, as the main course failed to stand-up to task.
The Thai Fried Rice (remember I ordered it spicy) wasn’t spicy at all, and I failed to grasp what was “Thai” about it.
It looked and tasted much like normal fried rice from a Chinese take-out. The Thai Style Duck (ordered extra spicy), again, had no spice. Zero.
I give this place two out of five stars. It’s a small step-up in quality from a delivery place like Golden Palace, but a steeper step-up in price.
I definitely wouldn’t come here to dine-in again, and with the prices, I’m not sure I’d order delivery either.
While it does have an extensive menu, covering sushi and other Asian cuisine, maybe I’d recommend it to people who are looking to branch out to new things.
The only solace I could find lay in the Sing Ha in front of me, served cold, which was impossible to mess up.
As my buddy and I sipped our drinks, we pondered the existence of pan-cuisine restaurants.
I left with my wallet $50 lighter and with a deep regret for not following my inclinations against these types of restaurants, which only furthered the misconception that all Asian food is either Chinese or Japanese.
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