My friends will soon be accusing me again of frequenting the same 3 restaurants because I just ate at Basi Italia last week, but I can't help it; the caesar calls me, and last night we could resist it no longer.
Okay, it's hard to find, it can be hard to get a reservation, their water glasses are really small, the restaurant is really small, you can easily converse with the table next to you, etc. etc. Get over it. So it isn't a grand, sweeping, open-space Cameron Mitchell restaurant. C'mon. Be honest, Columubites; aren't you tired of Cameron Mitchell restaurants? Not even a little? Oh well.
Basi Italia really isn't that difficult to find, if you just accept the fact that it's in an alley, and you should follow the directions you have. I know it might look like it will be in someone's garage, but it's there. I promise.
As for the space issue, Basi has opened a very nice patio behind the restaurant that easily doubles their seating capacity. Sadly, it has been too cold to eat out there every time I have been there this spring.
Although the Columbus Dispatch (sorry, you won't be able to read the article without paying) recently claimed that Basi no longer serves bread, they do. Where they used to serve an assortment of flat bread and country-style white bread, they now serve soft, warm herb rolls with little bowls of roasted garlic and red pepper flake confit. It is lovely, but I always have to warn my coworkers the day after eating it, because I could easily consume a whole head of garlic in this manner, and have a tendency to er, exude garlic from my pores. Sorry, kitties!
If you go to Basi, there are 2 things you absolutely must have. . .
Number one is the Basi Caesar, which is probably the best caesar anywhere, but definitely the best in Columbus. I think about it at least twice a week. A heart of romaine, some crumbled egg, a few good, white anchovies (they still look like fish, not oily little slivers, like most anchovies), some caperberries, a nice slab of toasted bread and a large shaving of parmesan, along with a good and honest Caesar dressing. It is truly heaven on a plate.
The second thing you must try at Basi Italia is the roasted chicken with grapes. This is coming from someone who never, and I mean never orders chicken in a restaurant. To me, chicken is something I begrudgingly make for myself when I'm eating alone and don't have anything else, or is picked up at the market from the rotisserie, out of desperation for dinner on the fly. But the chicken at Basi is amazing. It is a pan roasted half chicken, completely and expertly deboned (except for the leg), so the tedium of eating it is at a medium, and is roasted with grapes and cippolinis, then finished with a Chianti pan sauce. Alas, Husband ordered it last night and I felt that I had to make another decision.
I chose wisely; the bone-in pork fillet, which was finished with a nice compote of cherries, shallots, and spices. Due to my green bean aversion, I asked if I could have the sweet corn mashed instead, and they kindly obliged me. The pork was cooked well, if only slightly overdone, and the cinnamon and star anise notes in the cherry sauce were a perfect match for the pork. My only complaint is that giant chunks of star anise were left in the compote, and I kept getting them by mistake (it's rather dark), and biting into a whole star anise is painful on the palate - the real one and the tasting one. Here's a note to the chef: cheesecloth and string - all the flavor, no star anise shards lodged in my gums. The sweet corn mash was really sweet, rather like a corn custard.
For a wine selection, we chose one of my new favorites, K Vintner's House Wine, a blend of Cabernet, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and Sryah, which is a delicious steal for $26 a bottle. And it's made by a delightfully frizzy haired man named Charles Smith in Walla Walla, Washington.
Go ahead, visit Basi. Make a reservation, accept the fact that your server might be a bit surly, take my advice and get the Caesar and the chicken, at least on the first visit, and enjoy it, along with the people at the next table.
Info: Basi Italia 811 Highland Ave Columbus, OH 614.294.7383
