The Basics — Restaurant in Wilmington

Pictures posted with this review are from the previous "successful and delicious" meals. Not our experience on our last visit, just a few weeks ago. Sad to say that our last visit, after years of wonderful dinners at The Basics, was not good. We had an awfully disappointing time... Pre theater dinner, made reservations with plenty of time to enjoy our meal and yet extremely long waits for food, that were at least partly (according to comments our server made when we expressed our dissatisfaction) related to chef/kitchen issues, caused us to almost not make the show. We had to rush through the meal which by the way, was not impressive at all this time. The rice that came with the underwhelming salmon dinner was so plain that I don't think it even had butter as a seasoning. My filet mignon was barely warm. Very uneven service by the wait staff seemed almost shocking to us. We've been customers for years, and were even familiar with some of the wait staff. That's how we received "insider" information about the kitchen being out of sorts. Don't know when we'll make another reservation for dinner. When you spend a good amount of money, for what you hope is a delicious dinner and wonderful service, and are so disappointed... it makes you think twice about another try.

Latest Visit: Back again for dinner before the theater and once again it was outstanding . We made sure the chef and staff knew how happy we were! If you haven't tried the basics yet, what are you waiting for ?? Previous Visit: Went before going to the theater, had their theater/date night dinner menu. Bottle of wine, appetizer, we had the crab cakes (excellent), two entrees ( beautiful filet, salmon with pesto was freaking awesome).... and then strawberry cheesecake with white chocolate macadamia nuts and coconut, need I say more. Wait, I do need to say more. We made reservations online....the table was waiting for us when we arrived, our server Brad was super nice, knowledgeable, very personable and gave us perfect service. We will definitely go...

After having a brunch here on a Sunday, where we had to wait to be seated and were so excited to try (because there are so many people, there must be a reason), we left disappointed and here is why.

The service is not good. We were seated at a table right near the door, where people were passing by all the time. Our socially anxious four-year-old was feeling so uncomfortable that we asked to be reseated at another table (and there were three available for the exact same number of seats). After 10 minutes of thinking they decided they cannot offer us another table. The child barely ate.

The food is not good. It’s the food you would cook yourself at home on your very bad day when you absolutely don’t feel like cooking. It doesn’t look appealing, it tastes average. We ordered “grilled cheese” for the child and it turned out to be a cheese sandwich. Do you, guys, know what a grill is? This is straight up a lie on the menu. See the picture for reference. This is what you’ll get if you order grilled cheese. We also ordered granola from the menu. It came with just the granola, no yogurt, no nothing. Did you expect us to just chew on it?😀 That was so weird. The server literally said “You didn’t say anything about the yogurt”. Well, maybe because that’s how it is served in any other place you go and you don’t expect that a decent place will just bring you the dry granola. They brought the yogurt eventually just to be fair.

The atmosphere? Very crowded. Overpriced for the quality. Servers are annoyed and overwhelmed, therefore not very attentive. I don’t know why this place is popular, I don’t have a tiny bit of a desire to...

We went tonight for dinner and it was underwhelming to say the least. We ordered the spinach dip to start. The dip itself was perplexing, is it creamed spinach, a spinach soup, whatever the chick from the exorcist threw up? It tasted like old creamed spinach with some red pepper flakes thrown in to cover to the taste of old spinach, the bread served with this dip was delicious though. It really does the bread a great disservice to ruin it with the spinach. I was very much looking forward to my filet, ordered rare with a side of mashed potatoes and green beans. The food comes out, mine was warm but not hot. I cut into the filet which was more medium rare then rare and took a bite and the underwhelming train keeps rolling. I figure maybe my taste is off because of allergies so I had my fiance taste it and we agreeded that the mushroom sauce tasted off. I moved onto the potatoes which were not bad but not amazing either. I then took a bite of the green beans which were undercooked and tasted like chemicals and red pepper. Again, had the fiance try them and he immediately spit them out. I was over it at this point and explained the issue to our waitress, who did not seemed shocked at all. She was amazingly sweet about it and took the meal off of our bill and apologized repeatedly which was appreciated, we know it was not her fault at all. Everyone else said their food was decent but we would not go back. For the same price you can walk across the street and enjoy a meal at circa 1922, savor every moment of it and leave with a belly full of...