Thai Basil — Restaurant in Madison

Welcome to the newly renovated Thai Basil now located on University Ave near the Hilldale Mall! I knew of Thai Basil back when they were a small and humble little joint on McKee St and Raymond Rd. Even then it was a nice comfort food spot but designed entirely for a fast food experience and not designed for interior dining. The new location has upgraded significantly with a beautiful dining space, more staff, and a bar now! Plus the food itself seems to have been seriously elevated. Their website and online ordering service has somehow improved as well. The overall upgrade both digitally and physically is pretty sophisticated and I can tell that the folks behind it know exactly what they want. It looks like their dream restaurant:) and that gets me really excited! Thai Basil is now a proper and elegant restaurant offering a variety of delicious Thai dishes all made for a dining experience—it may have the same name, but its not the same restaurant, and it’s incredibly better! Plus, they are the only Thai place in town that I know sells my favorite drink, Thai Ice Tea with lemon juice instead of milk. Most Thai Restaurants in Madison will offer Thai Tea with or without milk, but rarely do they offer replacing the diary or coconut milk with lemon juice, which to me is simply a divine and harmonious pairing and I’ve only had in California until now. The cooking was always good before but they have somehow stepped up their game and it’s exciting! I’m curious how Thai Basil will do compared to all the other great Thai options in town? Will they dethrone the hallowed Ha Long Bay? Honestly, I don’t think they even need to worry about that. They have their own thing going on and it’s special. I know one thing for sure, Thai Basil is in my neck of the woods and I don’t need to worry about commuting to the east side for an excellent Thai experience; it’s for sure going to be dangerous for me to live so close to such a quality Thai restaurant on the west side! If they keep steady on this new path, it’s going to quickly become, if it hasn’t already, a Madison...

Horrible customer service, strongly recommend not coming here. It was our very first time trying thai food and we thought Thai Basil was a good restaurant to go eat at. The food and service during our meal was good, and our final check added up to more than one hundred dollars. When it was time to pay, we payed the full amount + a little amount of tips.

As we were heading into the parking lot after leaving, the waitress who served us came running out said "Hey, you people!", and was complaining about the amount of tips we gave her. She asked if her service and the food wasn't good enough for a higher tip and said it was "disrespectful" to give less than 15% tip of the amount we ordered. This was a VERY non-professional and rude experience. We told her in a respectful manner at first that we didnt know it was "disrespectful" and that she approached this situation in a horrible way. She didnt apologize, nor stand down. She was acting like she didnt understand at first, but we knew she could understand very clearly. We told her not to come up to your customers like this and not complain about tips, and should be sorry and her reply was "Yes we will be more careful next time from people like you." This very clearly shows an act of racism toward a hijabi. Towards the end, another waitress came running out rught as we were leaving to also backup her coworker. We left, and saw the smiles on their faces. This is not a law, and she was enforcing us to tip her the amount she pleased. She had no right whatsoever to be asking for more money, in the worst...

We came here with high expectations but really got disappointed. The service is good and we like the atmosphere, But if you want to eat authentic Thai food, don’t come here! ! We ordered three dishes, fired Tofu , two fired pork basil w rice and Tom yum noodles. The dipping sauce for the fired tofu is NOT THAI AT AlLL!! Why there is peanuts in a Thai style source? The Tom yum noodle tasted really wired and nothing Thai style at all. I would recommend Pho. Pho has a similar but better taste. My friend and I order other Tom Yam Soup bcz that’s what we want at the first thought. Sadly, Tom Yam Soup still tasted really bad. The soup is over sweet and tastes like the chief using too much tomato paste. The shrimp in the soup has fishy smell and not fresh for me.If a Thai restaurant cannot make a good Tom Yam, what can you expect?

edit： As a matter of fact， we just blamed ourselves for mistaking two dishes. We re-ordered the correct Tom Yam and paid for the noodles, as I stated above. My point is, the Tom Yam itself tasted bad ( Myself is a Thai cuisine lover I TRIED AT LEAST 15 different Thai restaurants in my life)and the shrimp is not fresh!! After eating the shrimp, there was the fishy smell left in my mouse that I had to drink water to wash it. please Spending more time on the cooking skills and your ingredients, not lecturing...