Basil Helps Add to the Spice of Life, Thai Style

Basil is not your average mom-and-pop Thai restaurant. It looks less like an eatery and more like an airplane hangar that happens to be tucked away in an Arcadia mini-mall.

Steel-gray walls and floors contrast with vivid red chairs. A counter zigzags through the space like a broken fuselage. A Cubist sculpture in wood softens the space-age colors but maintains the restaurant’s sharp-angled design.

Nina Prasikiew, who owns the restaurant with her husband, Poky, originally envisioned the place as a Thai fast-food buffet--a Bangkok version of Souplantation. Her sister, Harvard-educated architect Raveevarn Choksombatchai, took it from there.

The intent was to provide a backdrop for frantic lunch-hour forays. The concept, according to an article in Interior Design magazine, was “ ‘the glance’; the brief, fleeting, stolen view that cuts a path across forms and space as diners survey the room.”

“The disjointed forms . . . begin to suggest the splintered texture and chaotic skylines of the urban spaces beyond the world of the cafe,” the article continues. But while the decor may suggest the cold, fractured landscape of a metropolis, the warm service and food provide a brief respite from that hectic world. In the end, the Prasikiews decided to provide more leisurely table service in addition to the buffet.

Owner and chef Poky Prasikiew is the second generation in a family of Bangkok restaurateurs--his family owns two other restaurants in Thailand. Prasikiew cooks up recipes passed on by his mother, using imported Thai curry and chili powder, as well as lemon grass and the ginger-like root galangal that he grows in his Duarte back yard.

The menu consists of a wide range of noodles, stews and curries, mostly based on meat or seafood, but also includes a handful of vegetarian entrees. Stir-fried noodle dishes ($4.75-$5.95) combine shrimp, chicken and broccoli with spices and thick noodles. A pineapple-shrimp curry ($6.25) came in a steaming pot of tangy coconut sauce.

Basil offers the Thai standards like pad Thai as well as more offbeat dishes such as crispy fried catfish. House specials include gang garee gai , a chicken and potato curry for $6.95, and prik pow ta lay , sauteed seafood in a sweet and spicy chile sauce for $9.95.

The original vision of an all-you-can-eat lunch buffet, available on weekdays at $4.99, includes items such as steamed and fried rice, curry, pad Thai and fried chicken. The tables and counter are usually jammed at lunch.

The entrees rate mild to medium--4 or 5--on the scale of chile hotness, Prasikiew said, but taste slightly spicy to the American palate. Prasikiew will adjust the spice level to the diner’s taste, but he adopts a hands-off approach to the hottest requests--if you want a dish spiced at, say, the 8.5 or 9 level, you’ll have to doctor it yourself with the tray of chile sauces Prasikiew will bring out.

Although Prasikiew grew up with the restaurant business, he came back to the family trade in a roundabout way. He and his wife Nina both have law degrees in Thailand, and came to the U.S. to take the bar exam. They abandoned that plan when the cost of the additional law courses they would need proved too expensive, and Prasikiew took a job with a trucking company instead. When he was laid off in 1990, Nina suggested he return to his inherited vocation, and Basil was created.

Basil, 411 E. Huntington Drive, Suite 103, Arcadia. (818) 447-8845. Entree prices range from $4.50-$9.95; most are $5-$7. Open daily 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.