Thai Basil — Restaurant in Meridian

Thai food is one of my favorites. Usually you can't go wrong choosing a Thai restaurant. Unfortunately, this place is the exception. The only good thing I found the was one server, Benz. If not for his excellence as a server we probably would have left. The maitre d was a stone faced young woman who pugnaciously informed us that if we wanted our food to go we would have to wait an hour for it. That's the only time I saw her smile - when she informed us that. Our food took FOREVER to show up. We would have actually gotten it faster if we had ordered it to go. When it got there it was so bad that I literally could not eat mine. It was supposed to be panang curry with beef. I don't know what kind of beef was in it ( thin slices of something that had the oddest, mushiest texture I've ever had... Maybe it was liver?) but the"meat" was a few slices swimming in an orange colored sauce that was teeth clenchingly sweet. And that's pretty much all it was. Sweet, with a slight hint of heart ( I ordered medium heat). It was SUPPOSED to have kaffir lime leaves - something that I love the taste of and cook with myself. Not a lime leaf in sight, not a hint of kaffir lime leaf flavor. No taste of curry. My friend got the bean thread salad with shrimp. Two shrimp, to be exact. A few veggies, and mostly just bean thread. Which, when we asked to maitre d to explain, she could not. She mumbled something about the color of bean thread noodles, which was not accurate. When I challenged her about it she mumbled some more bs about the spices making it have color. I wish of she didn't know what it was she had just said so. We ordered a soup to go. One salad, one curry, one soup and the bill was$45!! For food that was so bad I couldn't even eat mine. Boise, this is not real...

So im here coming from California on a work related trip. So this review is in comparison to Cali grade food. Food is 4 out of 5 stars. I was hesitant to try this spot but I didn't want fast food or Denny's type food. Also I'm just a big food snob cause I'm spoiled to Cali grade food. I was very surprised to see Vietnamese Pho in a Thai restaurant ( yes I'm Vietnamese and make my own Pho so the bar is set high) I was surprisingly pleased with this beef Pho. Good depth of flavor (personally would let the broth cook longer for even more depth of flavor but im happy with it especially coming from a non-vietnamese restaurant in Idaho. Only other thing I would of liked to see in this Pho is more quantity as well as more variety of the beef cuts. This Pho had the bare minimum variety of beef cuts. Just had rare beef slices, beef meat balls and brisket slices. I would give 5 stars for food if I saw beef tendons and beef marrow (but these are usually in really authentic pho). My co-worker ordered the chicken drunken noodles medium spice level (even though I recommend the get mild spice and add more spice to his liking..he didn't listen..hahaha) and he definitely didn't have a stuffy nose after half way through. I stole a few bites and again 4 out of 5 for the drunken noodles. I would of just preferred a bit more sauce added durring the cooking process, noodles were a bit dry but flavor was very good. Final thoughts...would give 5 stars for food, but I'm just picky and a California food snob. Great friendly and...

After reading all the reviews I decided to give this place a try. We ordered Tum Yum, Gried rice and honey roasted duck. The soup was good, the fried rice lacked flavor and came with tons of rice clumps and the duck was very rubbery with no taste.

We sat there for about 20 minutes before they took our drink order. And waited another 10 minutes for them to bring them out. Thought out our meal our server (asian man in his late 20s or earlier 30s) kept passing by like he was practicing speed walking. We asked him multiple times for water refills but eventually had to ask other servers for some water. We ended up canceling our drinks because they never came. The only time our server was at our table was when he took our order, when he help bring our food out and when he gave us the check........ We also ordered a thai ice tea that seemed to have more water then anything else, I could not finished it. I was una me to determine if the tea was sweet/salty or just too watered down............. had the service been better perhaps I would have given this restaurant a 3 stars.

Oh and ps: when I told our server of our duck not having any flavor and being very rubbery all he said was " it sounds like it that's your personal preference", and asked if I wanted a to go box for it lol.

Anyways, for those of you reading this, you might enjoy the food better if you...