Sweet Basil Thai

. With the kids out of town, Lynsey and I are back on the Solano trail and a trip to Sweet Basil Thai. I ordered drunken beef; Lady Steed ordered kang kua moo; we shared kao pode tod. Our mains came with salad and soup. The salad was simple, looked like iceberg and carrot out of a bag, but the dressing was delicious. The soup was, I believe, a simple miso (or whatever the Thai equivalent is) but also delicious. The corn cakes I imagined would be like cornbread but no: pretty much whole corn somehow glued together. The accompanying cucumber relish was also tasty with a sauce even sweeter than the salad dressing. The cakes were good but not particularly memorable. Of our two main dishes, I preferred mine. First, the meat was more tender, but primarily, what I loved what the unavoidable Thainess of it all. Lime leaves and cilantro and ginger and all those other magical ingredients that combine to make Thai food so distinctive. Since first having Thai food early in our marriage and being blown away by the new palette, we went through several years of trying out every Thai place's pad thai and using them as a gauge of comparison. But you'll notice no pad thai today. I'm a bit surprised myself. But the fact is we couldn't really compare it to previous pad thai anymore. Since moving here (and beginning Eating Solano) we've been rather avoiding Thai food. It felt time to try something else, and avoiding Thai moved from a temporary thing to a near permanent thing. So while we can't compare so well any more to previous Thai experiences, I think you can say we've been reconverted. I'll let Lady Steed record thoughts on her dish in the comments.