Sweet Basil Thai Cuisine

One of my favorite restaurants, and the best deal for business catering in town. I will say, much to my surprise, the wings are better than pok pok! Great family owned business as well!

Ok, so this Thai place has the absolute best chicken wings!!! So favor full & crispy! We had 2 plates & wanted more but were too full from all the other delicious food! If you like Thai wings… this is hands down the place to go in Portland!

I tried this place on a whim the other night to try something new and something that is not pizza — that’s usually tough for me. Whilst reading a book, feeling particularly lazy, and intermittently scrolling thought Unilocal «nearby delivery» suggestions I happened upon this little place and thought, «Yes…we will have Thai food tonight.»
I ordered via the Eat24 site that’s coupled with the business’s Unilocal site, which was my first time using, and I must say that the process was very easy. When I visit the physical restaurant I will update my review :)
The food was delicious — we ordered the Gai Satay, Spicy Sweet Basil stir-​fry (mild, with ground chicken), and the pineapple fried rice and this was plenty of food for two hungry adults with some leftovers. Everything was cooked to perfection, super flavorful, and apparently I did fully read the description for the pineapple fried rice because I was super shocked when the lady handed me a whole fricken pineapple on my front porch. (A very nice lady, I might add. Wonderful customer service.) If you haven’t tried it, it’s great — could do with a few more shrimp, but it was still delicious. I will also say that the peanut sauce for the Gai Satay is one of the best I’ve had, so if you’re in the mood you should definitely give it try.
The only reason I gave this place four stars and not five was simply because of pricing. I know there are cheaper options out there, but I was still a little flummoxed when the bill came out to be $ 40 for just three items. Not terrible, but not great either. I will probably eat here again despite the fact, but just want everyone to be warned — the prices are a little steep for the amount of food you get — I would have thought you’d get a little bit more.

This was our 4^th stop of the night for our NYE Barfly party bus event. We didn’t have dinner here but hung out in the bar downstairs.
The staff served complimentary wantons stuffed with small bites of sausage. Deep fried anything is much needed after a night of drinking and they were delicious with the sweet chili sauce.
I had never noticed that this restaurant had a bar below, so we were surprised that they even had dance music playing; turning it into a small club.
There was more to this place that meets the eye and they had several seating areas to just chill and have drinks. It is definitely a cool local spot that I wish was walking distance to my home.

Family meal. The waitress wasn’t very good at listening maybe and things had to be repeated. A lot. My red curry was too spicy to eat. It had huge chunks of eggplant that were not edible. Super unhappy. 99% of it was in the bowl when we left. The pad Thai and pad see ew was fine.

Delivery was so delicious and prepared for a party! Pineapple fried rice was unlike any I have ever had and came served in a whole pineapple! The #37 cashew chicken with vegetables was delightful also. I definitely recommend.

Sweet Basil is my go to Thai place for delivery. They deliver to my area and have a good selection of menu options. I am allergic to onions, and sometimes they forget to leave out the onions in some of the food I order, but other than that I have been extremely satisfied with their service.

Food: 5 stars (very flavorful)
Service: 5 stars (very friendly)
First time here and overall great food and great service. We ordered a couple of things: oh my god appetizer (it was ok), garlic and fish sauce wings, deep fried pad thai, tom ka soup, asparagus shrimp with garlic sauce, and duck with mango sweet sauce. All were very good and were served family style portions. Ambience was very nice. It seems like it was a small house that was remodeled into a restaurant. I would definitely come by again!!!

I used to be a regular here years ago when I lived in Portland. Visiting recently, I met some friends there for dinner and was excited to see that it was just as lovely as it always was.
The Tom Yum soup cannot be beat. Same could be said for every variety of curry they offer.
The prices are reasonable, the service charming, and ambiance comfortable.
Still a win-​win!

The location is great, the restaurant is beautiful, and they have great food. They’re dinner service is a little spendy but we enjoyed everything we ordered. This place is great for meat eaters and vegetarians. They’re able to make almost anything on their menu vegetarian.

**Takeout review**
Finally, some good panang curry. Full of chicken, green beans, red and green peppers & basil. Curry is creamy as it should be. Bonus points for BLACK rice. If you haven’t tried it, please do. So much more flavor than white or brown.
Note on the spicy level here: Everything is hotter than you expect. The mild curry is definitely at least a medium, and the «extra mild» I’m eating is making my nose run. Call me a sissy, but don’t say I didn’t warn you!
Personally I don’t like the house ambiance, service can be lacking, so I skip all that and go pick it up instead.

Upon arrival in Portland on a brisk Saturday morning in October, I waited up for a friend who arrived an hour later and picked up rental car. We cruised through the streets of NE Portland to visit a friend of mine.
I had been craving Thai food at any length of time, especially when on a flight for 3 or more hours. My Portland friend recommended this Thai restaurant that was pretty much about 1.0 mile from her residence. After chatting with her for a few, we headed over to this place for a Saturday lunch. We were the first ones to enter here when it opened at 12 noon. It felt like being in someone’s house in some ways. Still, I was here to have Thai here with friends. The overall experience here at Sweet Basil Thai restaurant was decently good and positively delicious!
Sweet Basil Thai restaurant is located conveniently at 3135 NE Broadway Street in Portland, OR. They graciously accepts major credit cards, so that’s always a plus for me. The ambiance here, as aforementioned, felt like someone’s home, but that’s always sometimes how it is. The casual and quite atmosphere on a Saturday was quite enjoyable. The prices were on par with many of the Thai dishes that I have known many many times over. The restaurant seemed to be meticulous clean and organized, like an antique home that’s hardly used but kept inscrutably clean. For lunch, my friends and I ordered a tomatoey flavored pad Thai, which was an interesting way to prepare it. Also on the menu, was a yellow curry and an order of shrimp salad rolls, which I hadn’t taken a photo of. Oh well.
The service here was decent and adequate. The young server was positive and polite, which is always nice anyway. I think she was in college, but you could not be too sure. The food itself was of decent and average caliber. We ultimately split family style and split the bill 3 ways and on 3 credit cards. It was funny how that works out, but I’m sure it happens a lot. The shrimp salad rolls was pretty good, almost tasting like Vietnamese shrimp salad rolls. The curry was pretty good, as we had ordered it mild for everyone’s taste buds. Although the portion of rice that accompanied the dish was so un proportional, the entire meal left us all satisfied and happy with our purchase. Lastly, the tomatoey pad Thai was an interesting taste, since my friend who loves Thai as much as me don’t recall ever having pad Thai tasting like tomato sauce. Still, it was an experience that ended up positive and a joyful meal.
The overall experience here was good, although average — to be honest. If you are a lover of Thai cuisine, you may want to try this place out, if you are in Portland for sightseeing or wherever your travels take you. I would recommend trying this place, but the ambiance may change depending on the time of day and time of week you and your family/​friends are there.
Support local!
B

Friday night, seated promptly, cocktails served right away. Food is awesome,
Calamari, Thai wings, all sauces, all delicious!

The worst customer service ever. I walked in and inquired about patio seating since it was a beautiful night. I say «night» but it was only 7 pm. The young waitress with long hair in a pony tail (working ¹⁰⁄₂₁ evening) told me the patio was closed. The first couple of times she told me that I just absolutely could not understand what she was saying. She does speak English but just barely… and with a thick thick accent. I just could not understand what she was saying though I was straining.
I very very nicely told her I couldn’t understand and to please repeat. She started acting very angry and stomping around. I finally understood that the patio was closed, she then sat me at the worst possible table and threw the menus at me. Yes, THREW them at me. One even landed on the floor. I was very upset and got up to leave. I’ve had rude waitresses but throwing things is unacceptable.
After leaving I couldn’t get in touch with the friend meeting me there in 10 minutes so I reluctantly went back in. Another very nice waitress showed me to a better table. After sitting there for awhile and after I ordered, my friend ended up canceling, I immediately signaled the nearest waitress to let her know everything would be to go, unfortunately the nearest waitress was the horrible one. She rolled her eyes so hard to the back of her head I thought she was going to have a stroke. She refused to even speak to me.
I’ve never ever been treated so terribly by waitstaff.
She honestly should be fired.

Positives:
— they deliver
— the pork spicy fried rice was slightly better than decent
Negatives:
— the lad Thai was not good. I ordered it with medium spice and the lady on the phone warned me that medium is «pretty spicy.» I said that was fine. Once it arrived we were totally disappointed that the dish was actually sweet (weird) with sorta like a BBQ type sauce on it (totally weird). Despite being starving neither of us could eat it.
— the papaya salad was too runny with a vinegar flavor. Not good.

Have been down to the Basil Bar a few times for Happy Hour now. Usually have good HH cocktails to choose from and quite a bit of stuff to choose from food wise. The first visit was great & I tried a few different cocktails, all great. The second time I had a different bartender and the drinks were noticeably different — could barely taste the alcohol & both were too sweet & harder to drink. Should be noted, I had the same two drinks the week before. So that’s why I’m taking one star off. Other than that, service has been really nice & all the food I’ve tried was good! They have live music a couple nights of week downstairs in the bar as well.
My only other complaint was that I found their summer hours to be quite restricting, where as most other places are open longer in the summer. It seemed that they could be missing out on a decent amount of business not opening for dinner until 5:30. But maybe I’m just not used to restaurants starting their dinner service that late.
I plan to also eat upstairs at the restaurant, so far have only been to the bar. Will definitely go back.

Such great service. Such lovely ambiance. Such easy ordering on the Unilocal app. But Sweet Basil’s food has M. Night Shyamalaned me three times now and at this point I’m not sure why I expect anything different.
I’m not talking crazy plot twists — I’m talking hyped expectations, incredible set ups, stars aligning, angels singing, and then BAM: an underwhelmingly clumsy conclusion.
Like films, I could talk Pad Thai for days. It’s the keystone that generally holds the rest of the menu together. Two of three times it has tasted heavily of tomato paste with a sticky texture to match. The yellow curry was missing oomph and again, texture was off. And here’s the thing: I’ve heard from trusted fellow Unilocalers that their specials are mind blowing. But I’d also heard great things about M. Night Shyamalan films only to get my hopes up. So here’s hoping the chef had 3 random off nights, but for the time being, I’ll stick with my well loved classics.

I can not say enough wonderful things about this restaurant, especially Boos! I agreed to coordinate a good friends wedding (side note: I am not a professional wedding coordinator) Boos catered the event. He was paid to drop off the food at 4:15 then return at 7:15 to pick up the hotplates. He went above and beyond all of that.
I was running around filling coolers, emptying trash, opening bottles of wine and Boos just jumped in to help. He lifted the trays of pop and beer and put them in the cooler, helped me open wine, cut and served cake with me. I was looking forward to my favorite dish, the green beans, I was so busy I didn’t have time to get a plate but Boos appeared next to me with a plate of my favorite thing and said «I grabbed you some before it was gone, take a break and eat». This wonderful man went out of his way to help even though he didn’t have to!
Boos, a million thank yous for helping make my friends day beautiful! I can not tell you how much I appreciate all of your help and kindness!
If you are looking for a cater with THE BEST food who is also honest, caring, kind and hard working. Boos is your man!

Pet peeve.
These guys are in my neighborhood and I’ve enjoyed their food though it’s not the best I’ve had. That said, their lame ass customer service today, reminds that I visited a few months ago I was pissed about our treatment then.
These guys close at 2:30. So they say. Tell you what kids, if you get there at 2:05 the icy reception you get is very real. When eating there in the restaurant last time I felt rushed as several people slammed chairs into place and got ready for dinner service. We were the last customers and they really couldn’t wait to get us out the door and the message came across loud and clear. We ate fast and left…
Today was even worse.
I call 20 minutes before closing, hoping for sone quick Thai but they are locking up 20 minutes early because the last customer just left and the woman cut off every sentence I had.
Hey — there are 7 457 735 773 Thai restaurants
around here and I was unaware you, Sweet Basil, had a Michelin star? Your food is mediocre at best but you must be some kind of confident bunch to have such disposable customers.
Enjoy your good fortune!
My money and I will be going elsewhere.
Maybe you should rethink the whole interrupting thing as well. It’s kind of something we teach children not to do.
Rave On.

I’ve been to Sweet Basil twice now, once for a July special dish (the vegan coconut vegetable stir-​fry) & today, for the spicy sweet basil stir-​fry with tempeh (also vegan) – while I’m not generally a fan of coconut-​flavored dishes (it was my fault for ordering one), my first Sweet Basil meal was fragrant & well-​portioned enough that I wanted to return to try one of my Thai cuisine staples – my dish today, in terms of flavor as well as portion, was one of the best I’ve had in Portland. I let my server now how appreciative I am of a Thai restaurant offering tempeh, as well as a vegan sauce substitute for a large number of their dishes. I look forward to visiting this neighborhood gem monthly if not more often.