another new restaurant

Tonight Dani and I headed for the Indian Oven on Murray Avenue in Squirrel Hill. We were surprised to find it no longer there. Pity; I liked their food and (as you would expect from an Indian restaurant) there were a lot of vegetarian dishes on the menu. (Why do good Indian places keep going under? First Sitar, now this...)

But all was not lost; it has been replaced by a Thai/Filipino restaurant. I wouldn't have thought that a natural pairing, but shrug. The place is Sweet Basil; there is (the waitress said) a Sweet Basil in Lawrenceville and this is their second location. They opened last month. (For Squirrel Hill old-timers, there is no relation to the Sweet Basil on Forbes that was replaced by Zeb's, which was replaced by Zen Garden (the all-vegetarian restaurant that made me happy during its brief existence), which was replaced by the much-inferior Hunan Kitchen, not that I'm bitter.)

We enjoyed the food at this Sweet Basil. Dani got a Filipino sampler that included something chicken, something beef, and something shrimp; I got fried tilapia cooked in chili paste with vegetables. The fish was very good, and the portion was quite generous. They asked me for a spice level and I said 7 (this is my default for new restaurants that do numeric spice scales), and I thought it was a bit mild for a 7 but perfect for fish with chili paste. (I have a side rant about numeric spice levels having nothing to do with this restaurant, but it won't fit in the margin of this entry.)

Dani said his food was good; the portion appeared less generous than mine, but that may be the sampler effect. (Maybe you pay a premium for variety.) The presentation on his was generic -- nothing fancy, nothing bad. The fish was pretty, topped with some sort of small dried noodles and some sort of greenery on top that was arranged, not just dumped. The vegetables were nicely arrayed around the fish. I usually don't notice stuff like this (except in sushi places where they generally make an effort), but this stood out.

We both had soup. I had the tofu-vegetable soup (explicitly noted on the menu as a vegetable broth, so I didn't have to ask). It has a hint of lemongrass in it, and the green vegetables were cooked but not mushy. Dani's soup smelled good (a chicken soup made with coconut milk) and he said he liked it.

Dani's sampler came with ginger tea. We both thought it should have been steeped longer, but it was nice otherwise. They brought a small pot of tea, not hot water and a teabag and not a pot with solids (or leaves) in the bottom.

We both had flan for dessert. It was light (not dense) and neither overcooked nor undercooked. This, too, came on plates with attention paid to presentation.

My fish dinner was $15. Most of the vegetable entrees were about $10; it looked like the meat dishes hovered around $12-15. (I didn't spend a lot of time looking.)

Service was mostly good, except for a false start where our waitress apparently forgot about my soup for a long time. Every table was full when we were there (around 7:00). I hope that's a positive sign and that they'll be around for a while.