Bill's impression of me being a chain ganger, aka a chili's junkie is all wrong. I hate chilis, applebees, and all the like, i like the local flair. However I could in no way see why people think sweet basil is so amazing. It just tasted like every other asian cusine place i've ever eaten at.
There are only two asian restaurants where I've been impressed with the foods uniqueness. Pho Grand which is in st. louis which is like Sweet Basil in its quality only a few notches better but has great atmosphere as well. The food is vietnamese so its slightly different but in the end the same ingrediants for the most part. Its one of the few asian restaurants where you leave and don't feel like you gorged on a fat and grease, its a pretty healthy look at asian food.
The other restaurant would be PF Changs which though a chain is a pretty good attempt at fancy chinese food. Though with PF i still feel like i'm paying twice as much as the moon at noon and getting the same food. Its the same food only fancier.
My wife and I put it this way. You can go to Armandos and get a 3 dollar grease burger thats awesome. Or you can go to Canyon Grill and drop 23 bucks on a ground Filet Mignon burger. They're both good, one is better quality, but in a lot of ways they're both awesomely tasty in their own right. Now which would you rather have? I'd rather have the Armandos because I'll feel good about not dropping over 20 bucks on a burger. I feel chinese/asian is the same way. Its all the same you're really just moving up the quality scale. So I'm a moon at noon guy and an armandos guy, both serve tater tots and french fries I believe, just like old momma Chen does in downtown Hong Kong.
Posted by holtonian at July 4, 2006 09:45 AM | TrackBack