One month later, and only anger has brought me out of blogging retirement. Anger against....Thai Basil. Seriously, fuck that place!!! The only reason I was going to eat Thai in my neighborhood was because I was going to see A Doll's House at CapStage with my mom and didn't have much time. So, my thoughts turned to Coconut. Which is our local spot, which has a funny pseudo-focus on craft beer and had bottles of Blind Pig at one point. It's really popular. It was mysteriously closed, which turned out to be due to a rodent infestation. Sooooo....right across the street is Thai Basil. The menu is weird and not appealing. I knew pad thai was a no no because odds were it would be cloyingly sweet. The only place I like pad thai is Asian Café. We got a shrimp and chicken spicy noodle salad, fried egg rolls (like I said, not a lot on the menu sounded good), a curry with eggplant, and a green curry of some boring kind with tofu. The food took quite a while. It was loud in there, because the place is so inexplicably popular.
Our noodle salad was just...ugly. Soupy sauce, had TWO SHRIMP in it (served to a table of three). A few sad herbs tossed in, including a big chunk of cilantro with long stem. The green curry was basically soup. Tasteless soup with not much in it. The rice was even dry and not tasty. The whole thing was just bullshit. And the kicker? Subtracting the beer - our meal was like 60 bucks before tip! It wasn't even particularly filling. I have not had a meal make me that angry since the Head and I went to the Dime, and that was like, two years ago or more.
A Doll's House was good - it's very long. The woman playing Nora was fucking great. I need to read the play. I'm confused by how weak the supporting characters were, and can't tell if it was because of the adaptation. Of course they had to fuck with the era, and set it in the late 1940s instead of the 1870s, which I think weakened the radical punch of it. At least they didn't make it post-apocalyptic like they did Macbeth!!! Still CapStage is on a roll with their first two plays of the season. I guess the article about Mr. Burns is going to be on the cover of American Theater, which is a really big deal in the theater community.
7 comments:
I had to write this really quickly before one of my FOUR MEETINGS I HAVE TODAY! So over meetings.
Overpriced and underspiced, the Midtown mantra.
DP and I had our first date at Thai Basil!
I've had mixed experiences at Thai Basil (have been going there since they opened years ago) but overall I think it is a lot better than Coconut. Their noodles are generally better than their curries, but the weirdly named winter curry that is currently on the menu (with fried okra and kabocha squash) is really good.
We ate at Coconut twice when they first opened, and everything was super sweet. My kids loved it but I was really underwhelmed and have not understood its instant popularity. Maybe they've gotten more interesting?
I don't think either of them are very good, I just thought the meal last night was annoyingly bad.
Have definitely had those from Thai Basil, usually when we get takeout. Their drunken noodles are pretty good but they make everything with white meat chicken and it is always dry as hell. I usually order tofu there.
Coconut flaunts the vegan/vegetarian angle like crazy, which is no doubt part of its popularity. I'm not at all a picky Thai eater but this particular Thai Basil meal was comically bad. The real question is: who's been to Noodles to Thai For in the old Shoki?
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