Thai Basil: Authentic, delicious Thai food in downtown Ithaca | Restaurant Reviews

ITHACA, NY — The first thing that strikes me about Thai Basil is the contrast between the small size of its frontage on State Street and the large size of its menu. Located directly across the street from The State Theatre, it’s tucked between several other retail establishments and, if you didn’t know it was there, could easily be walked right by. The restaurant itself is long and narrow and has room for less than four dozen diners. This works out well for them as about 70% of their business is takeout.

The menu, on the other hand, is large… both its size and the extensive number of offerings. There are eight amply illustrated cardboard pages connected by a spiral closing. And these pages describe myriad Thai offerings with major sections for photographs — Recommended Starters, Recommended Entrées, Appetizers (10), Vegetarian Appetizers (8), Fried Rice and Fried Noodles Dishes (12), Stir Fried Entrées (6), Thai Curries, (6), Chef’s Creations (9), Whole Red Snapper, (4), and Duck Specials (6) as well as soups, salads, beverages, beers, wines, and two and three item combinations.

The large number of offerings creates a challenge for a diner to choose a meal as well as for a reviewer to select from so many items.

Here’s a helpful hint to start: There are small symbols of red peppers next to some items. One pepper is “Mild,” two means “Medium” and three means “Hot.” Personally, the mild was just over the line for my taste so in choosing future meals I will only opt for items with no red pepper symbols. Even so, the amount of heat used has been Americanized as the levels I remember from my visits to Thailand were often considerably higher.

In the greater Ithaca area we definitely don’t have a dearth of delicious duck dishes — Thai Basil with their half-dozen duck offerings ($19.95) is an excellent example. A popular choice is Thai Basil Duck which I ordered during a recent visit and which I thoroughly enjoyed. The duck was roasted, boneless, and then deep fried to get it crispy, cut into small pieces, and complemented with beautifully cooked onions, bell peppers, mushrooms and basil leaves and then kicked up enough to challenge my pain/pleasure threshold with chilis. (It does have a single red pepper icon.)

Another visit, another duck. This time Honey Duck. It doesn’t have any pepper icons and was mild with beautifully cooked al dente carrots, peas and cashews in a homemade honey sauce. I enjoyed it.

I love soft shell crabs. The entrée I ordered here, Soft Shell Crab Pad Phong Karee, is different from western offerings. Two crabs were cut into medium size pieces which were virtually indistinguishable in a mix of onions, scallions, bell peppers and celery, all blended together in a thick Karee. (Karee is a yellow curry paste unique to Thailand.)

One of the featured sections on their large menu is called Combination Sets. Two Bites ($16) offers a choice of Pad Thai, Pad See Aew, Drunken Noodle, Green Curry or Red Curry, served with Thai Iced Tea. I ordered Drunken Noodle for my entrée. Drunken noodles are large, flat, rice noodles and come with a slightly spicy soy sauce and some more of those beautifully cooked veggies. The veggies I could identify were baby corn cobs, broccoli, carrots, green beans, onions, red pepper and cabbage. The chef knows how to offer fresh vegetables al dente without under or overcooking them. Incidentally, red curry is milder than green.

Thai Iced Tea is the second bite. It’s a Ceylon tea served in a large glass filled with ice cubes and a copious amount of milk and sugar — quite sweet, and quite good!

If you order Three Bites ($21) you also get a Thai Spring Roll (two glass noodles filled with shredded vegetables) appetizer.

Here’s a heads up for you: The four Whole Red Snapper entrées ($23.95) are just that — whole, meaning you’re going to be greeted with the head and tail and you’ll have to filet it yourself at the table. I think it’s worth the effort.

I don’t know how many diners enjoy wine with Thai food, however if you’re one of them…you’ll have a problem here. There are only a total of seven on offer ($7/$8-$28/$32). I ordered one of the three reds, Cabernet Sauvignon and they were “out.” You’ll have a better chance with one of the 12 beers, ($3.50-$4.75) all in bottles.

I don’t usually compare restaurants, however I don’t think there’s another restaurant in town that serves better authentic Thai food.

Tidbits:

-Thai food is not served with a knife. If you want one, ask.

-Thai chefs often feel it’s better to serve the meals when they’re ready and hot rather than wait to accumulate all the meals for a table before releasing them all at once from the kitchen. That’s the case here.