Basil Thai At Urbana — Restaurant in Urbana

They can’t bring the heat.

I really enjoy good Thai food, especially those rare places that can bring a broad, deep palette of spices and flavors to bear, while also offering a spiciness that has both a good bite and a lingering burn. Basil Thai offered none of this.

I had the Pad Thai. The palette of spices was uninspired to the point of being nearly bland (something I didn’t think could be done with Thai cuisine). Although I order the “secret level 10” spiciness, it barely registered as medium hot (for me-- full disclosure, I like it hot). My spouse ordered Woon Sen at spiciness 2, and the bite I tried didn’t even register as spicy at all. Finally, when I’ve had good, spicy Pad Thai (at excellent Thai restaurants-- sadly, none in the Urbana/Champaign area), I’ve noticed my Pad Thai comes out a noticeably different color (and was clearly prepared separately) than the “normal” level dishes my colleagues order (theirs is the normal pale noodle, mine is bright red). My “level 10” Pad Thai from Basil Thai was the normal color, and I have a sneaking suspicion all they did to “kick it up a notch” was toss in some finely crushed red pepper (or something similar) to a normal spice level dish, which doesn’t bring anything like the kind of heat a good, spicy Pad Thai does.

This is all not to say the food here is bad, or in any way offensive. It’s just very uninspired. Pretty average (not just for Thai, but for dining out in general). I would warn away anyone who was hoping for something amazingly good (which this place had been described to me as) or particularly hot (again, what I’d been told). Stick to Siam Terrace. So far, in my experience, they are the best Thai food in town (though still not quite a 5, but a solid 4).

One last word of caution. I’ve never seen this before, but my spouse's order of Woon Sen was served with a massive mound of rice, and almost no Woon Sen. In my experience, the rice noodles in Woon Sen are the rice in the dish, and not served over rice. This meant she paid $10 for about 3 cups of rice and 3/4 cup of Woon Sen.

Update: I tried them again, this time dining in, on August 28th, 2017. I let them know that I had been unimpressed with their level 10 spiciness before and asked them to make it as spicy as they possibly could and was still disappointed by an, at best, medium spicy meal. It was also still only passable overall. Stick with Siam Terrace. You'll come away...

I'm fed up. I really like their shrimp fried rice, but the quality of each shrimp fried rice varies too much with each other (plus it's also really expensive). Sometimes the taste isn't there, and there's always not a lot of shrimp. The pad thai is similar in that sometimes it has a taste and sometimes it doesn't, and almost always it feels too sweet when there is a taste. Today was the final straw when I saw a long hair in my food. Gross! I know it's not mine because my hair is much shorter and it was buried under some rice. The woman has way too thick of an accent, it's really hard to understand her. The restaurant is a giant cheapskate, what with the high prices and the gimmick where if you buy 9 meals with cash you get the next one free, but that free one HAS to be under 8.20. And that's written in fine print! And the meals you have to buy have to be greater than that, not to mention the entire menu is way more than 8 dollars. Plus she never prompts you to show your card or if you have one, even if you pay with cash. She just wants to hide that information so she can make the most money possible. It just doesn't feel good going here, which is a shame because I truly did like the taste of their...

Back when I started school here in 2017, this was the GO TO Thai food in the area. Pad Thai was delicious, everything was great. Haven't been in about a year due to COVID, and finally went back last night. They clearly have either changed who cooks the food entirely, or they have sunken their food costs so much to the point where I would actually prefer a frozen bag of pad Thai from Costco or trader Joe's. It's really not good anymore - the pad Thai was sloppy, the noodles were cheap and overcooked, the chicken was grizzly and poorly cut. Every piece of food was cheaper and lower quality than in previous years. Overall - if they want return customers they are going to have to change because as it stands now I'd rather eat panda express or just get some McDonald's.

Shame - used to...