Basil

What with my ongoing quest to sample some of the finer restaurants in Charleston, when I was offered an invitation to dine at Basil this evening, i snapped it up. Basil is a Thai Restaurant located on King St downtown that has both a very good reputation and has some very good word of mouth from friends and colleagues. It's something of a surprise to me that it's taken me over a year to actually get there - of course, this wasn't intentional. I had planned on visiting there on a couple of occasions in the year - with visiting lecturers (when work pays, it's soooo much better) but, for various reasons, these had fallen through. Anyway, i finally managed to make it out there and, after a short wait for table (30 minutes - during which we went to a bar next door, and the waiting staff were good enough to come and tell us when our table was ready), we were seated. So, I guess, what's the verdict?

The answer: largely very good. The food was excellent - and the only real thing wrong was that the waiting staff (at least, the one that we had at our table) could'v edone with a bit more cheer about her. But that's a minor grumble. Starts of coconut chicken soup (quite rich but yummy none-the-less) and egg rolls (nice and crisp with very little excess oil and greasiness) were followed by a duck salad (i wanted something a bit lighter). The salad was fantastic - huge chunks of duck with a variety of crisp vegetables (plus cashew nuts - yum) as well as fresh cilantro and ginger to give it a nice kick (and, my goodness, you could taste them both). As the occasion was a workmate's birthday, we followed it up with deep-fried green tea ice cream - which came complete with candle (and for which we weren't charged). A nice rounder to the meal. All in all, it was very good indeed - and i'd recommend it to anyone. I just hope, now, that it's not over a year before i venture in there again.