Blue Basil

Blue Basil is this little restaurant (with no carpark) located inside a shophouse along Cairnhill Road. I just checked hungrygowhere and found that so many people have been there! Ah well, I'm slooooow. Anyway, it was well worth my climb in the hot sun (while complaining to Jane cos I was very hungry and we walked all the way from my usual carpark location, which is VERY far). This was the Bruchetta with Exotic Vegetables (I think it was like $6? eeps I didn't take note of the price) which was crusty baguette topped with vegetables marinated in olive oil. From what I can identify, there's zucchini, red peppers and that yellow UFO like thing (dunno what it's called it's a kind of squash). It tastes very healthy (no butter) and it's definitely not for veggie haters. I decided to settle for the lunch special (Mon-Thurs, 11am to 3pm), which costs $14.95+GST.

For the choice of appetiser, I tried the Roast Tomato Basil Soup (highly recommended by Jane), which is a herb infused chunky tomato soup. It's not overly salty, and the taste of the sweet tomatoes came through clearly.

For the main, I had the grilled chicken with vegetables, potatoes and sauce. I was very depressed when it came because it was insanely tiny! As you can tell, portion sizes are very important to me. The chicken was nothing spectacular - not particularly dry nor tender, but passable. The only carbo here was 2 small new potatoes - lucky we ordered the bruchetta or I'll be very hungry!

The Pan fried filet of Dory with Lemon butter was not bad, I think the portion is slightly bigger than the chicken. Again, it came with 2 small new potatoes and roasted veggies.
You can add $2 (to the set lunch) for a scoop of gelato. There's a choice of either strawberry, vanilla or chocolate. The chocolate is really very rich and delicious, and the taste reminds me of extremely chilled Dutch Lady Chocolate milk.

Overall, this is a pretty cool place to chill (if you don't have to pay parking and you don't mind walking up the hill) and there's even a spa on top. They currently have 1 for 1 alcoholic drinks for the afternoon (not sure what time the 1 for 1 ends, and if it's available on weekends). For people who eat very little (flyfairy! cel!), this is the perfect place for you cos the ambience is nice (and cannot be eaten).

When we were there, there was only 1 waiter but he was very efficient and we didn't have to wait long for him to serve us because there were very few people. I suppose that most people wont go out of their way to come here.

Blue Basil

56 Cairnhill Road (behind Paragon, near the ERP gantry)

Tel: 6737 8770