Thai Basil — Restaurant in City of Ithaca

It's safe to say that this was one of my worst group dinner experiences ever.

About two weeks ago I called in for a graduation dinner reservation for 10 people (my and my roommate's family) in the evening. It was a same-day reservation, but I called as soon as the restaurant opened (around 11:30 AM). A woman on the phone asked me to arrive on time so that things would go smoothly.

We did arrive on time, and your expectation would be that with this much advance notice, a restaurant would be able to adequately assess their needs for the evening and adjust accordingly. Sadly, this is not what happened.

Instead, the restaurant forgot our order. Nobody even asked about us; no one even checked in after an hour. After an hour, multiple waiters visited our table to re-ask our order. They still got it wrong, and served us at least one wrong dish. What ruined the experience even more was how impatient and abrupt the servers were with their mannerisms---hurriedly asking us for our orders and being impatient with vegetarian/vegan options.

We waited two and a half hours for food. Other groups of people came, ate, and left while we were waiting for our food. And the waiters dismissed people waiting at the door, multiple times, even those with reservations. (For some reason, they didn't actually lock the door and prevent new customers from wandering in, which baffles me.) Simply put, this restaurant was operationally incompetent. I would've addressed these concerns with them in person but they simply had no time or willingness to listen. Our night was painfully annoying and completely ruined.

Again, we waited two and a half hours for food. After this experience, any reasonable restaurant would have considered taking care of our bill for us. But the waiters were harried and could not even bother, in fact the waitress taking care of us simply said "I'm very busy, please don't waste my time and figure out how to pay." Great job ma'am, the ten of us are never...

First, the in house person gets a 1 for service. We ordered through Grubhub and given a 45-50 minute arrival. 90 minutes later we called the restaurant and were told it was on the way. 15 minutes later we called again and were first told they had an online system problem. Then she asked what I ordered. I was thinking she was verifying where it was, but she then said they'd make it and rush it over. I said "no, you told me 15 minutes ago it was on the way", she spoke to someone else and said it should be there in 15 minutes. I said "no, I'm turning off the outside lights and refusing the order" and she hung up on me. 30 minutes later the delivery guy showed up. We had already eaten something, so we told him it had been 2 hours and we told the restaurant we were not going to except the food. He apologized, said he had to help them get the order out of the system and to take the food at no charge. It was obvious she had lied on both calls. We felt weird taking the food, but he was genuine and polite, so we did. We discovered they had also screwed up the order; missed the spring rolls and didn't leave out the pineapple, as we had requested. So, we would've overpaid by about $7. Food was about a 3.5, but we will not order...

Ordered online on a Friday night with ASAP as the pickup time. I got to the restaurant about 10 minutes later and told them I was there for a pick up order. They were very busy and it looked like one person was hostess, waitressing, and handing out take out orders. After I was there for about 25 minutes, the waitress/hostess said my order was being cooked. About 20 minutes after that she asked if my order was from Grub Hub, and I told her that I ordered from their website (not Grub Hub). After a total of an HOUR in the restaurant (70 minutes after ordering online) I finally got my food. I understand that they were busy and I felt sorry for the waitress. However, I would have told them to forget it and left had I not prepaid online The food was good. A little pricey ($48 for 2 chicken stir fry entrees and a dumplings appetizer). It is obviously a good restaurant based on how busy it was (many people came in for a table while I was waiting for my food, but they left because the wait was too long). So, my recommendation is to give this place a try if you are in Ithaca and you see that they are not super busy (maybe a week night). But DON'T ORDER/PAY ONLINE!!! Hopefully they resolve their staffing issues and online...