Some of the best Ottawa food is in strip malls. T-Basil is no exception

Admittedly I was a little shy about visiting T-Basil when it was recommended because I was under the impression that this was a restaurant I’d been to and had left a rather unpleasant impression. Sometimes you’re relieved to be wrong. 

It was a quiet Sunday afternoon when I popped in for some take-away and was welcomed by a rather spirited individual who, as it turned out, was the owner. She mentioned that the ‘T’ in T-Basil stood for her first name but before I could ask for the spelling she’d disappeared into the kitchen.

You may have noticed over the years that some of the better eateries happen to be located in strip malls. It's this that makes them difficult to identify when you’re driving along a main thoroughfare. You can only do so much rubber-necking and remain safe. Luckily we have engaged readers whp are ready to help with suggestions.

It’s become a practice when visiting Thai and Vietnamese restaurants to sample items on the menu I’ve not seen often, if at all, on other menus around town. 

T-Basil had a few such dishes and I also went with a standard spring roll appetizer as that was the mood I was in.

It was a nicely prepared roll firmly bound with a mix of pork, shrimp, mushrooms and assorted other veggies. The flavours were nice and the roll was as good as those of other restaurants. Just nothing very memorable.

Neua Ta-Krai is an explosion of lemongrass, ginger and onion stir-fried with beef. Every mouthful released plumes of spice perfume and it was a heady affair. 

The beef was very tender and the soft onions added a little creamy sweetness but the spicing here was very bold and I felt it was a little too aggressive. All that lemongrass and ginger was also texturally distracting as I felt the need to spit out all those hard splinters of cellulose.

Go figure that it would take a trip to Orléans to introduce me to a Thai noodle dish I’d never come across before but that made a kind of sense.

Thai basil is the other most commonly known variety of basil outside of the type used in Italian cooking. Most of us enjoy pesto on pizza or pasta so why not use the Thai variety for pesto? That’s the common-sense idea this kitchen had for this tasty dish.

The tangle of noodles was luminous with green and as I slurped away, I shook my head as to why this simple, yet novel, idea had never occurred to me. Delicious and even the menu mentions that this is their “chefs ultimate pride”. 

It’s meant to come with bean sprouts and egg but those were missing from my dish and I felt that all that basil sauce would have benefitted from an extra splash of salt via fish sauce and a little extra brightness courtesy of fresh lime.

This was a convincing introduction for me to T-Basil and I know that I’ll be back to take a deeper look at the menu. 

As it stands, there’s a reason that this restaurant has been impressing locals for 17 years: it has the recipes and the culinary techniques to impress newcomers and aficionados alike.