Mixed messages

Authentic búns save the day at
Viet/Thai restaurant Basilic

by A.J. KINIK

The first thing you notice is the décor. With its sleek style, its elegant floral displays, and its walls adorned with contemporary art, Basilic stands out from the overwhelming majority of the city’s Vietnamese restaurants, most of which have a style that one could safely label “no frills.” In fact, Basilic’s got a look that—in this town at least—one would be more likely to associate with some of the city’s more stylish (emphasis on the “-ish”) Japanese and Thai restaurants.

The next thing I noticed were the flat-screen televisions. I found the fact that there were TV screens present at all somehow noteworthy, but more interesting still was the choice of entertainment.

I’ve been to Basilic on a couple of occasions now for lunch, and each time the tension between the tandem televisuals was fascinating. On one occasion: FoodTV.ca’s inimitable Ricardo and a duckpin bowling tournament. On another: the frenetic charms of Iron Chef America and repeat coverage of the equally frenetic 2008 Rallye Baie-des-Chaleurs. Then there’s the soundtrack to dining at Basilic. With both TV sets mute and the stereo on, those souped-up Subarus were tearing across the Quebec countryside to the sounds of smooth jazz.

All of this to say that there’s a certain degree of marketing going on at Basilic, but that the results of this marketing are mixed. And, unfortunately, the same can be said about their cuisine.

I recently took a party of four to Basilic for lunch to check things out and we got things started with an assortment of appetizers: the bánh xèo, or Vietnamese sizzling crepe ($9.50), the sugar-cane shrimp ($6.95) and a grilled chicken and mango salad ($8.95).

The shrimp- and pork-stuffed crepe was fresh off the griddle, it had the right turmeric-laced golden hue to it, and it came with many of the accompaniments one would expect: the fresh greens, herbs and vegetables and the dipping sauce. It also tasted good. There was only one problem: for some strange reason, they’d decided to leave the tails on the shrimp, making for an unexpectedly jarring dining experience.

The sugar-cane shrimp and the grilled chicken and mango salad were both good—the sugar cane imparting a pleasant caramel-like sweetness to the shrimp, the mango keeping the salad bright and perky. But neither was memorable. The shrimp in question was shrimp paste, which, although perfectly authentic, I’ve never found as rewarding as the version made with whole shrimp, while the grilled chicken looked and tasted a bit dull, taking some of the life out of what was otherwise a lively salad.

Basilic’s noodle soups—so dependable at some of Chinatown’s other pho specialists—were also a bit hit and miss. With its combination of thinly sliced beef and peppercorn-studded pork sausage (lots of it!), the spicy hue-style pho ($7.95) was intriguing, but I found the spicy broth a little generic. Meanwhile, my guest’s duck pho was a strange brew—short on actual duck meat and filled with an assortment of unidentified vegetable matter (roots? fungi?) that might have prompted some inquisitiveness on our part had they not been so overcooked and lifeless, its broth a touch too sweet for our liking.

The biggest misstep was with our sole venture into Basilic’s vegetarian offerings. While most of Basilic’s menu is Vietnamese, they bill themselves as a Viet-Thai restaurant, and include a number of Thai standards. For some reason, most of their vegetarian dishes are nominally Thai, including my dining partner’s red vegetable curry ($7.95). This wouldn’t have been a problem, except that the curry that emerged was just about the funkiest (in the original sense of the word) curry I’ve ever tasted (and smelled). ’Nuff said.

Just when we’d given Basilic up for lost, out came the two bún dishes: one with grilled pork, the other with grilled beef (both $7.95). The grilled meats both had a really lovely lemongrass flavour to them, the raw vegetable accompaniments were really fresh, the noodles were light and not overly starchy and the bowls were big and generous. In short, they were pretty much ideal. Go figure.