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Night 20: Sweet Basil
The next night I have a reservation at Sweet Basil.
I'm meeting friends, but they're late. Being the well-mannered
kind of people I choose to spend my time with, they
have thoughtfully phoned in a message so I don't have
to worry my watch and think I am there on the wrong
night or at the wrong hour. (A friend showed up a day
early for my wedding, and followed the whole family
circus around to prenuptial events like a forlorn pup.
We have snapshots of him, shoulders sagging, in the
background of every event — the rehearsal, the
rehearsal dinner, the prenup brunch, looking like Waldo.)
This little interlude gives me time to watch the passing
parade on Fairmont Avenue, and it is almost literally
that. Outside the window there is an ongoing procession
of dads toting their wee sticky ones on their backs,
coming from the ice cream place on the corner. But the
wait gives me time with the menu, for which I am grateful.
Candidly, Thai food has never been my favorite. It
has always tasted soapy to me, the same somewhat unappealing
list of chicken and beef and seafood with oily, muddy
or incendiary sauces with too much cilantro, and the
inevitable pad Thai, which seemed more culinary miscellany
than an actual thought-out dish.
Sweet Basil's menu is literature after pulp fiction.
The possibilities seem endless, and I am tempted to
order something, anything, even before my friends
arrive. I wait, though, making myself happy with a gin
and tonic and an entire basket of shrimp chips, whose
connection to shrimp eludes me. Styrofoam, yes, but
shrimp? They're good, though, like a sort of infantile
oral fixation.
When my friends do arrive, we spend a good long time
on the menu. They agree that these dishes will be more
than we have come to expect. We are so right. Turnip
cakes would be unrecognizable if we hadn't read the
menu, but their satisfyingly bland flavor is flattered
by a sprinkle of sprouts and peanuts and a scalding
dipping sauce. Grilled calamari is tender and fine.
We go through the animal kingdom in our entrées
— chicken, snapper and lamb — and make good
on our agreement to share (a bit grudgingly, I think).
When Birat Pitayatonakarn, the owner, comes by to chat
we ask him why his menu is so splendid, so unlike those
at all the other Thai places we have been. These, he
says, are authentic traditional Thai specialties. What
we have been ordering for years are tailored to American
tastes — gringo food, friends, the Thai equivalent
of chop suey and egg rolls.
But who can be in the kitchen? Mr. P., born in Bangkok,
has a sister who runs a restaurant there. A country
girl came to work for his sister and learned to cook
at the sister's side. She is now Mrs. Pitayatonakarn.
She runs the kitchen at Sweet Basil, so the recipes,
to our good fortune, live on. Back to restaurant list
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