Thai Basil

Chris and I feel very fortunate to live so close to good food in Collingswood and Haddonfield, NJ.  People have been mentioning Thai Basil to us for years, but we’ve never gone. I’m always a bit skeptical when it comes to Asian-American or Asian fusion restaurants, just because I feel as if I have a high standard due to my upbringing. I imagine it’s the way Italians feel about Italian-American food. It’s indicative of the correct region, but yet, not true in spirit.

Something about the word "Thai" and this kind of sign display just seems...incorrect.

Regardless, we visited Thai Basil for a Saturday late lunch. We arrived around 2:15 to an almost empty and very low-lit restaurant. (Throughout the course of our meal, only one other couple showed up to eat). The vibe is very chill, very relaxed, with large comfy booths sectioned off to create privacy. The music is lounge-y, with every other song in French.

Right off the bat, from looking at the menu, you can tell that the focus of this food is “flavor”. They have two of their specials engraved into the mirrors in the room to showcase the range of ingredients they use for staples such as tom yum and drunken noodles. They also proudly boast four types of curry- red, green, panang, and massaman.

I ordered the drunken noodles with mock duck after reading a favorable review of it on Yelp. It was priced at around $12 which seemed perfectly reasonable. On the menu, it has two stars indicating its spiciness. I ask for it to be reduced in spice, to which the server said “We can’t make it completely spice less, but we can make it mild”. “Great,” I said, “let’s make it mild”.

Our appetizers came out before our meals. We ordered the veggie curry puff- a whimsical dish reminiscent of an Asian-style Jamacian spicy beef patty or an empanada. Flaky and doughy at the same time with rich aromas, it was filled with potatoes, curry, and onion. It came with a sweet chili sauce that tasted like Vietnamese nuoc mam ngoc with a bit of duck sauce to thicken it up. Delicious, and left us craving more.

The best way I can express my main meal is: a labor of love. Presented well in an avant-garde tilted bowl, it smelled delicious with aromas of fish sauce, chili, garlic, and all other things that make life great. My ‘duck’ was pretty good imitation, although some pieces of the ‘skin’ fell short. I don’t really see how you could imitate the high level of fat (and eventual crispiness) that you would get from an animal. Noodles were delish, just the right amount of stickiness and starchiness.  This being said, I could not eat more than two bites in a row without taking a huge sip of water. The spice level was ridiculous almost to the point of being intolerable. This was better once the dish had some time to cool. I know that one shouldn’t go into a Thai restaurant and tell the kitchen that the food is too spicy, but when you’re told that something is coming to you “mild”, you expect a certain threshold to not be breached. The only other customers there actually were comped because their food ended up being too spicy to eat.

As for me, I was mostly happy with the entire meal. I ordered the Laad Na off of their "Meal in a Hot Pot" page of their menu. The Laad Na's description was simple enough. I had the choice of beef, chicken, or shrimp in a pot of sauteed vegetables and seared rice noodles with gravy poured on top. I went with the beef because I was curious to see if the beef would be prepared similarly to Pho that I've had in the past. When the meal came out I was immediately pleased with what I saw. The beef was front in center, the bowl was big and deep, and the vegetables had their color. It was beautiful. Sadly the beef was a tad over cooked and not as tender as I was hoping. However, it did bring in a lot of the flavor of the sauce. My favorite part of the dish was the broad, flat, rice noodles that were soaking up the gravy at the bottom of the pot. They were extremely tender and rich. The gravy reminded me of a Vietnamese oyster sauce. It was very savory, but it definitely had some sweet element to deepen its flavor profile. The worst part of the experience was that we were seated at a table that was next to an area of the carpet that looks as though it hasn't been washed in a few years. Hopefully by the time I go back they will have already shampoo'd their carpet.

I felt very conflicted about the food because it was delicious, but for the majority of it my tongue was maxed out and the spice detracted from the layers of salty, sweet, and sour.   

Such an awful experience, but over so soon! We’re gonna have to do this one over again. Perhaps it was a fluke?

Dark, moody, and minimalistic

Extra notes:

Free soursop hard candies when you leave and it looks like they  might own a new place called Fusion Bay next door that offers similar taste profiles but in a casual dining atmosphere.

Collingswood Diner

 

The Collingswood Diner is not my favorite diner, although I wish it could be. I feel like it’s a diner that I had to have been a part of growing up, and to suddenly enter as an outsider, I feel disconnected, and unaware of what’s ‘usual and customary’ here.

Collingswood Diner

Our waitress was kind and attentive enough, but had unkempt hair and makeup, with a distinctive ring around the collar on her white polo accented with a festive “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” pin. (We visited a few days before Christmas.) As she poured our coffee, I can definitely say it detracted from my appetite a little, although I tried to see past it.

This is not a shiny, new diner. It is large, kind of dark and impressing from the outside, located at a major intersection that connects to a highway, so getting into the actual parking lot can be a little daunting if you haven’t done it before. However, I am a fan of having diner at this part of time, simply because I think it’s as nice cross-section of diner-enthusiasts of all socio-economic ranges, since you get populations from the major towns nearby. Inside, there is a friendly, multi-cultural atmosphere- tables full, and big group tables of work buddies hanging out.

An Excess of Powders

My French toast was well intended, but overall not that delicious. I appreciated the extra cinnamon they sprinkled on top (quite liberally) because it gave an extra pop of flavor that can be missing from mass produced breakfast breads. However, because of this generous cinnamon, and the cold (and NOT plentiful) butter that was provided, my butter stuck to the cinnamon and to my knife, and not to my toast! As happens with French toast when it’s too thick- very little of the egg can even hope to get all the way through, so I felt as if I was eating a kind of bland cake. After dolling it up with the works, it was decent, but kind of disappointing.

Darn Good Omelet

As Chi worked her way through her French toast, I picked through my western omelet. It is my favorite of the omelet and I'm very pleased that the Collingswood Diner had one of their top chefs on the line that morning. One of the easiest tasks that diners can't get right is cooking an egg all the way through. I've had omelets, scrambled eggs, fried eggs, and poached eggs where In the middle is slimy, clear, raw egg. Too me, that's unacceptable. Collingswood Diner cooked the egg in the omelet perfectly. There was plenty of diced ham, onion, and green bell pepper. It was a great omelet. There was one small problem, and that was with the cheese. Cheese in an omelet costs extra, but I ordered it anyway. The slices of American were concentrated to one half of the omelet making it very globular and gooey on one side and flat and a little dry on the other. However, I'm not going to let concentrated cheese sully this omelet's good name.

The home fries were a bit on the lacking side. I'm starting to think I'm become more of a hash-brown  type of guy. There's more of an opportunity for crispiness and fluffy potato to live in harmony with hash-browns. These home fries met the same fate as other establishment's home fries. They weren't cooked enough twice. They weren't cooked down to an appropriate level of softness and then when they got to the grill or frying pan, they weren't cooked to the right level of crispy. This leaves the diner with kind of hot, kind of raw potatoes.

Joe Pesce

Seven Layer Chocolate Birthday Cake

Happy Birthday to us! Our birthdays fell on the weekend of the biggest winter storm the north east has ever had in the month of October. Now for South Jersey, it wasn't too bad. We had slick roads here and there, a couple of patches of black ice, and a wee bit of accumulation. However we made the decision to not go to a dance competition in North Jersey due to, what we gathered, some pretty nasty weather. That being said it was technically my birthday so we opted for a Silver Spoon instead of our usual Jersey diner. I chose to go to Joe Pesce which is a little intimate seafood restaurant in Collingswood, NJ right on Haddon Ave. I had heard personal stories from outside parties that they can mess up orders or completely forget an order as well. But, I wanted seafood, darn it! So we went.

The snow was thick, heavy, and wet when we ran from our parking spot a block away into the Joe Pesce and we were instantly greeted by the man I assume is the owner. He took very good care of us making sure that the rest of his staff was attentive and helpful. He might have done a little too much over managing in the beginning when he told us all of the specials for the day (which he had memorized like a Shakespeare soliloquy). At the same time, it appeared we were the first guests of the night so while the rest of the staff opened bottles of wine, brought over an ice bucket, and tidied up the rest of the restaurant, the owner made sure we were taken care of.

Grilled Octopus

We started off the meal with a grilled romaine salad (I'll let Chi expound on this one) and some grilled baby octopus which came in a pleasant white sauce. We have admittedly eaten an unusual amount of octopus in the past few months for a couple that resides in Cherry Hill, so we are undoubtedly starting to learn who has the best octo. Unfortunately for Joe Pesce, in comparison to the other two restaurants that have served us this gastropod, theirs comes in third place. The poor little guys were over grilled and the only one that was marginally tender was the largest one on the plate. The problem was that since every octopus was a different size, they ended up cooking everything for the same amount of time, but different thicknesses of meat will cook at different rates (it's a surface area to volume thing). The largest octopus was very good, though. It had a great char on it with a superb grill flavor, but the other little ones brought down the entire dish.

Whole Dorado in Scampi Sauce

For my main course I ordered the whole fish of dorado in a scampi sauce. My fish was not deboned at the table but whoever finished the deed behind the curtain did a decent job. I found maybe three bones in the entire dish, but having caught and filleted fish myself, I know that sometimes bones are missed, and I also know to eat deboned fish carefully. The sauce was delicious and light and really complimented the buttery, oily taste of the dorado. The meat was very tender and the quantity surprised, since the last time I ordered whole fish I was left hungry. There's not much else to say when you're served quality seafood. You can tell the fish is fresh when it's not fishy.

First of all, I apologize for the poor quality of photos. Joe Pesce's is very dark with soft lighting which is a great settling for intimate dinners, but not so much for amateur food photography, especially when you just have your smart phone. I wasn't brave enough to use my flash.


It's a small restaurant, with plenty of staff- it seems as if there is one main cook with a myriad of waiters who also finish meals, filet whole-fish, slice up salads, etc. The low bar/exposed kitchen wall allows you (if you wanted) to walk up and watch your meal being cooked.


Their specialty is fish, cooked to order either as the whole fish or a filet, with a choice from several saucy finishes. I want to say that the menu pairings of fish and flavors was thoughtful, but I can't fully recall because we all ordered specials. In fact, I'm not even completely sure that we opened our menus. Just to give you an overall sense of our fishy adventure, Chris's father ordered the Mediterranean Branzino, his mother ordered the (wild [really?]) salmon, Chris ordered the dorado as referenced above, and finally I ordered the strange monk fish  It's apparently a pretty ugly fish- but I believe in inner beauty tastiness.

Beautiful Monkfish 

The appetizers we ordered were specials as well and the one I found particularly tasty was their grilled romaine salad (with crab meat/shrimp) in a homemade Caesar dressing. "I know it's Romaine," the waiter said, "but trust me."


We did and noms ensued. Firstly, presentation-wise, this salad is very daunting as it's a full (large) head of romaine that comes out hot, hot, hot, but not still crunchy with very little collateral wilt. Our waiter put in the extra effort to divide it for the four of us, and even though it serves two, I would say that all four of us received a very good amount. The dressing was creamy, but tangy which helped cut the grilled flavor and kept the salad from tasting too rich. Honestly, I found the crab and shrimp to afterthoughts to the actual salad, which is good in the sense that they accomplished in making the romaine the focus.

Monkfish's Side of Zucchini and Potato

Though the lighting is humble, this is a picture of my monk fish as it came out to me on a bed of arugula with a mango topping (like a chutney). Simple, but all that was needed since it turns out this type of fish is very hearty. The filet tasted like it was dark meat, with a distinctive strip of fat (almost of tendon-consistency) throughout the middle. It was very strange textually, but definitely kept me interested. Since then, I've learned that monk fish is often referred to as "the poor man's veal/lobster", depending on your personal experience. I would definitely agree to this in saying that it felt like i was eating some strange hybrid of fish and meat, which was probably the thing that turned me off (since I don't eat meat). Overall, the flavors were delicious, and I ate all of it happily.

Sides were yummy- but expected and boring. Mash potatoes were creamy and not too bland, and not too salty. Zucchini was grilled well, but at the end of the day, it's a cheap vegetable side. I would have preferred some dark greens to go with the dark fish, but maybe I'm thinking too inside of the box.

We then ordered two desserts on top of our meal; the cheesecake and the chocolate cake. The cheesecake was a healthy serving (one giant piece served as two). It tasted like three quarters creamy cheesecake and one quarter creme brulee, like they had torched the top of it a bit. As for the crust, it was a classic, thick graham cracker crust. A very decadent and filling dish. The chocolate cake was impressive itself. It was seven layer chocolate cake that managed the impressive feat of having a very rich dark chocolate flavor balanced with sweet, milk chocolate tones which kept each bite from becoming dull and redundant.

Additional Notes: Classic BYOB in Collingswood, so drink up but get home safe. It's a small space so make sure you make reservations ahead of time. The price is what you would expect for a menu that is comprised of mostly specials that are completely original and homemade.