Basil Spice, Tulsa, OK

This morning my friend Justin and I shopping and opted to make our luncheon at Basil Spice, an interesting little Thai restaurant in a converted Taco Tico building which has been around for, I don't know, five or six years. We had a very friendly and well informed waiter who liked to talk about all the favorable reviews the restaurant and specific dishes had gotten. We started with chicken and vegetable-stuffed steamed dumplings with fish sauce and scallions. For a main course, I had the cashew nut special, which was a pleasant melange of chicken, cashews, water chestnuts, onion, carrot, shredded mushrooms, and deadly little red pepper pods, all in a light brown sauce. Justin had the "Amazing Thailand," a dish highly touted by the waiter, which was a hot spicy chicken and peanut combination in a peanut sauce presented on a divan of stir-fried broccoli. Both dishes came with jasmine rice. We split a Thai ice cream for dessert, which was a bowl of vanilla ice cream with some sort of exotic Thai fruit that was a translucent pearl color with an al dente tooth and a slightly sweet fruity taste, and then garnished with a heavy sprinkle of ground peanuts.