Green Basil in Metrotown, Burnaby

Posted by ben Published in Thai

When Suanne and I started blogging early last year, we were just checking out blogspot without the intention of really blogging for this long. Back then it was quite the fad … just like facebook today. We thought that the easiest thing to blog about is food since we encounter food every day. We told ourselves that we will blog anonymously. I think we had been pretty successful in keep ourselves anonymous … don’t you think? Actually, if you look hard enough, you will find there are just two pictures of me and about half dozen of Suanne (we have tons of pictures of our boys though).

There are several longtime reader of this blog. One of which is the mysterious LotusRapper. I see his name peppered all over Vancouver food related websites and forum. He seems to be an expert on food … if you had asked me to guess, I really thought he was a food critic for some publication or working in a food industry related job. Since both LotusRapper and I work around the Metrotown area, I got in touch with him to go check out this new Thai restaurant on Kingsway in Burnaby.

Some of my office mates have rave feedback for the Green Basil. Some of them frequent this place quite often.

Knowing how busy this restaurant could be, we went just a tad before noon. It was a good decision because by noon, the place was completely packed. I think what really drew people to this new restaurant is their advertised Mon-Fri $6.95 lunch special.

I ordered their $6.95 lunch special to check out what this is all about. It came first with some vegetable broth. It was quite OK.

Next came the salad which is a bit too flat. Anyway, I don’t really fancy salad. The fried vege spring rolls was nothing special. It is not bad by any means — it was just OK.

I wanted something really spicy and their Red Curry Pork with Green Basil and Coconut Milk sounded spicy enough. What more, they had the “3 red chili” symbol next to it. Actually it was not spicy at all — I was quite disappointed about it, not that it was not good.

What sets this place apart is the ambiance. For serving $6.95 lunches, this place is fabulous. Just the perfect place to bring out of town visitors to the office when I could not expense the lunch. :-)

BTW, great to meet you LotusRapper … and being able to put a face to the famous LotusRapper handle.

Tom Yum Noodle Soup (January 16th, 2006)

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Anonymous said in October 26th, 2007 at 3:13 pm

Mysterious huh ? So you liked my mask and cape :-)

It was a delight meeting you for lunch Ben. And GB was definitely an elegant venue, especially in the Metrotown neighbourhood.

I meant to send you a review write-up of my lunch but never got around to it. I ordered the pad thai if you’ll recall, as I believe it’s supposedly one of those signature Thai dishes that can reveal whether a Thai restaurant is “authentic” or not. At any rate my pad thai was very good, loaded with prawns, scallops, chicken, shreds of egg, peanut and succulently (and correctly) flavoured with tamarind and fish sauce (Note: real pad thai should NOT have any ketchup or tomato sauce).

Prices may seem a bit higher than popular venues like the Thai House, but I can tell there’s definitely more authenticity and TLC going into GB’s offerings and the way they are prepared. In that light GB is a terrific value.

I’ll definitely be going back to GB.