Fresh Basil

After reading all of the positive reviews on Unilocal,my husband and I decided to give this restaurant a try, and it is only a stone’s throw away from our house. There were two other tables that had customers, and we were seated right away and given water. We ended up ordering the spring rolls with extra peanut sauce, drunken noodles with beef, and red curry with white meat chicken and veggies with white rice. The only drawback was that I had to ask twice for my iced tea, and I was very thirsty. The young, nice waitress apologized and got me the iced tea right away. Everything we ate was absolutely delicious, and the grand total was less than $ 20! We paid her a $ 6 tip, and were very happy with the «made fresh to order» food and service. We will come again. Normally, we can’t walk out of any Thai place without spending at least $ 35. Great corner restaurant at Elk Grove Florin and Vintage Park near the Taco Bell.

I love their stirfried beef on cool rice noodles. (dry)
Imagine bun with all the wonderful very fresh vegetables and rice noodles, topped with lots of tender, well seasoned, perfectly sautéed chunks of steak and onions. May be the best bun I have ever had.
Thanks Minh P for suggesting this dish.

I loved the calamari – so tasty and not greasy! Also enjoyed the pineapple curry fried rice and flaming banana with ice cream – that’s right – a flaming banana!
Everything is fresh and cooked to order, the atmosphere is comfortable, and the staff is very friendly and attentive. Very affordable, too.

Okay service… I was sorta disappointed because the food and service was not living up to the Unilocal reviews :(Since it was a fusion of vietnamese/​thai food, I thought it would be good food.
I came here with my sister and friend, and we ordered the following:
lunch special is only 5.99, it came with
–yellow curry+rice and 1 soda= it was decent for the cheap place, however it was mostly rice, more chicken please! :/​
–pad knee mow= not favorful, only came in one flavor (chicken and shrimp), and we were looking for beef!; it needed hot pepper flakes (not on lunch special) :(
–pad thai=it was not sweet, rather the food was blandd… disappointment :(
–tom yum soup= good, it was flavorful. I’d only come back here for the soups :) (~$ 4 for small)
Overall, I’m glad to have visited this small, family-​styled restuarant, but customer service needs to be improved, we were looking for refills and spices. But, i understand there was a limited amount of people working, but maybe I’ll go, if I was in the area.

Fresh Basil, I want to like you so much. The owner is genuinely nice in this family owned restaurant, obvious with his daughters running around.
We received some recommendations: The seafood hot and sour soup, drunken noodles, yellow curry, and spicy basil tilapia. True to the restaurant’s name, the one consistent thing between all the dishes was «fresh.» Everything tasted cooked to order. But while no dish stood out as being bad, none was particularly amazing either. The best dish among the four was the tilapia, which was lightly breaded, fried, and seasoned with sweet basil sauce. The yellow curry was unremarkable and lacked the depth and complexity of curries I’ve tried elsewhere. The drunken noodles were a strong dish with a light wok flavor. I’d skip on the soup, but I may be biased because I’m not a particular fan of the flavor profile of Thai soups.
Overall, a solid restaurant that will only get better as the chef hones his recipes and technique.

My experience with this pleasant family owned, neighborhood restaurant was A+ all the way! My boyfriend and I dined here on a late Thursday evening. We were the only customers at the time and got plenty of special attention because of it!
The owners welcomed us with warm enthusiasm. As we were seated, I could tell our server really enjoyed cooking. He told us about the dishes they serve and that everything is made fresh to order. He loves customer feed back in his efforts to perfecting their menu because they are a newly opened restaurant and wants to create foods that his customers want and expect.
After some hard decision making through the extensive lists of Vietnamese and Thai selections, we narrowed it down to 3 dishes: Pad Thai noodles, fried with chicken, shrimp and vegetables, Yellow Curry with white meat chicken, and Spicy Basil Tilapia, served with steamed rice. You are asked what degree of spiciness you can handle. AND they are happy to make substitutions, additions or removals of some ingredients if you request it! Since most of the dishes with chicken contain dark meat, I was lucky enough that evening to substitute white meat instead. Lucky, because they don’t always have white meat on hand. So it helps to call ahead if you have any special requests.
Our entire meal turned out to be excellent. Everything cooked to perfection. My favorite was the Tilapia. Crispy and spicy on the outside, but still moist and tender on the inside. The sweet basil really added to the flavors too.
You get generous portions, so we got to take plenty of left overs home. Couldn’t wait to eat it all over again the next day.
We loved the owners! We loved the food! We will certainly be coming back for more! Food worthy of the «Top Chef Masters!»

Its nice to get a home-​cooked meal from a restaurant literally a stones throw away from home. This humble Vietnamese-​Thai restaurant was many things before it was this. I remembered when it was a seafood café and a cajun foods place before it became its present day incarnation. This is a great place to grab a home style meal, if your home is southeast Asia.
I must be honest, I prefer the Vietnamese side of the menu over the Thai side. Of the Thai side, I tried the Chicken Larb salad and Pad Thai. Both dishes were average with lots of fresh produce and herbs, but was not the best dishes I have had.
I think the winning dish here is the stir fried beef with mint and lemon grass served over rice vermicelli noodles. I will preference this by saying that my dad makes this dish all the time and I grew up with it. So when I found this dish here it had a high standard to go against. The fresh mint and lemon grass is perfect with the tender stir fired beef and onions. Its served very simply over the noodles and a side of sweet and spicy fish sauce. I personally don’t really use the fish sauce and the flavors of this dish does fine without the sauce. I ask that it is made spicy and I love it. This is a must try if you come by. Simple, fast, delicious!
The spicy beef noodle soup (Bun Bo Hue) here is also Grade A. Rich beef broth and amazing spice. If you love spice, you gotta try this. A hot bowl of this on a cool night will warm you up and fill you up. When made spicy, it makes me drip sweat from my brow and I love it.
All and all, great little restaurant. A winner in my book because it suits my taste palette! If you are up for spicy foods, come here and ask for things to be made SPICY! You will not regret it. This place leaves me with a good sweat, burnt out tongue, but a satisfied belly!

i really like this place, where else can you get decent thai food and really good vietnamese food in one place?!
this is a vietnamese-​family run place. the people serving you come out and conversate with you and it’s not in the annoying kind of way.
they even noticed that it was our first time there while i noticed they were talking to other customers like they were regulars. and don’t worry, i will be a regular.
my first time being there and reading all the reviews, i really wanted to try to calamari, but because i ate before, i had to hold off on that.
but i got the green curry. it’s not the best curry i’ve had, but it’s not the worst either. i really enjoyed it, medium spicy. i would just want more sauce, i like things saucy.
my friend got phở. their phở selection is not as extensive as a typical vietnamese phở restaurant place but you can still opt out on what they do include in the phở. my buddy just asked for the rare steak, and that was no problem. my friend also asked the phở to be hot, is in temperature hot, and the waiter said not to worry because that is how phở is meant to be served. and as we were leaving, he told us that all the ingredients they use are fresh. that’s great, i mean any restaurant can say that. but then he added, no msg! which is fantastic, delicious phở broth with no msg?! how can that be?!
and i must say, the serving can make you full, but not extremely full.
we were just about to leave when a waiter comes busting out with a plate of oranges. instead of candy, they give you fruit! they say it’s traditional to end a meal with fruit, a vietnamese tradition it is, not sure about thai tho.

Fair prices. Decent food. Good customer service. Great lunch place as it is close to work for me. The few times I have been there we were the only ones. I hope this place sticks around for awhile.

The customer service is great, although the wait is a bit long. Today was my second time going to the restaurant and the owner remembered me. It was a pleasant surprise. The owners were conversating with the customers and the restaurant had a nice atmosphere to it although it’s not too big.
The last time I was there I ordered the chicken wings, 3 taste shrimp, eggrolls/​springrolls and the banana dessert with ice cream (forgot what it was called). Everything was pretty decent, but nothing extraordinary. The chicken wings had an overpowering taste because of the fish sauce.
Today however, I got the green curry, fried calamari and drunken noodles. The green curry had a nice, sweet flavor to it. It was pretty good. The calamari was well-​seasoned and had a unique taste. The texture of the calamari was nice and tender also :) The only real problem I had with it was the greasiness of it. The drunken noodles however were very plain :(

Great always fresh dishes! My son can’t get enough of their phở! The owners are always accommodating and show a genuine concern for the customers! Try the drunken noodles, the larb and combo fried rice!!!

Friendly service, good food, decent price, pretty typical Vietnamese Restaurant but I gotta say the Phở Broth here is BOMB! And they also serv Thai! Try the fish if you goin Thai! Can’t go wrong!

Awesome family owned restaurant! The prices are great, the food is amazing, and the staff is awesome!
I agree with all the other reviewers. Get the Calamari appetizer; It’s fantastic!
The Chicken hot and sour soup is also awesome. They send it to your table in a flaming pot so that the soup is perfectly heated.
I’ve been back a few times, and haven’t been disappointed.

I feel like I stumbled into a little hidden treasure. At last a Vietnamese Thai restaurant in Sacramento that believes in really «Fresh» food. Now it takes a little longer to make your order from scratch but it tastes so much better.
Since everything is made from scratch they can adjust the recipe just for you. That means you can have your food as spicy or as mild as you like. Plus if you don’t like the sugar that many Thai restaurants add to please an average American palate you can ask them to leave it out!
The portion sizes are huge. The food tastes great and they really are not charging enough money.
The unfortunate part of all this is that so far after three visits during the lunch hour we’ve been their only customers. This is a new place but unless business picks up, I don’t see how they’ll survive.
It’s great food but a very hidden location in a neighborhood not known for great food. It’s worth a drive down Elk Grove Florin road and giving it a try before it’s gone.
Who knows if enough people try this tasty spot it might just stick around.

Friendly and courteous staff and good portion size for the price.
Spicy (hot) drunken noodles had the perfect amount of heat.

Entrees are about $ 7 – 10, and they serve a range of Vietnamese and Thai dishes.
Quite possibly the best calamari I’ve ever had. The drunken noodle and spicy seafood soup were amazing as well!
Good prices, great food, amazing service. I’ll be coming back.